notion itself. Our conclusion, therefore, is that only the reality which adequately expresses the notion is truly reality, and the reason it is so is that therein the Idea manifests itself as existence.
3. We have maintained that beauty is _Idea_. It follows that _beauty_ and _truth_ are, in one aspect of them, _identical_. In other words, beauty must itself in its intrinsic being be true. A closer investigation will further show to us that truth must be _distinguished_ from beauty.
The idea is true in the sense that it is so by virtue of its essential being and according to its fundamental principle[193], and as such truth it is thought[194]. It is not its sensuous and external existence, but the _universal_ Idea of thought as present in this. At the same time the Idea is driven to seek its realization in external and objectively determined existence, both in the sphere of Nature and that of Mind. The true, in the absolute sense, also exists. And in so far as, in this its external existence, it is immediately apprehended by consciousness, and the notion rests in immediate unity with its external appearance, the Idea is not only true, but is also _beautiful._ The _beautiful_ may therefore be defined as the _sensuous semblance_[195] of the Idea. For the sensuous condition and the objective world generally maintain no real self-subsistence in beauty, but have merely to surrender the immediacy of their _being._ In beauty such are posited simply as the determinate existence and externality of the notion, and as a form of reality, which itself manifests the _notion_ in unity with its external appearance in this its particular objective existence. For this reason it can only pass as the semblance of the notion.
(_a_) Accordantly with this it is impossible for the understanding[196] alone to grasp the significance of beauty. For inasmuch as objective reality is apprehended by this faculty as something at least quite other than ideality, sensuous perception, as something very different from the notion, the external object as something that is anywhere rather than within world of the conscious self, to that extent it cannot fail to emphasize the contradictions implied in such separation, rather than penetrate to the ideal unity we have above described. The understanding remains rooted in the finite, the incomplete and untrue abstraction. The beautiful is on the contrary itself essentially _infinite_ and free.
For although the content of beauty is stamped with particularity and to that extent limited, such content is essentially in its mode of environment a totality that is infinite[197] and a free existence; and it is both for the reason that it is the notion, which does not pass beyond this its objective semblance, and so fall into finite and one sided abstraction with it, but rather is immersed as a blossom with this its objectification and through the imminent unity and perfection of such inclusion is revealed as essentially infinite. With equal truth we may affirm that the notion in sealing, as it were, with a soul the real existence, in which it is part of the objective world, is itself by itself freely manifest in that world. For the notion will not suffer that external existence in the sphere of beauty to follow, as it would otherwise, the laws that therein are paramount: rather it determines out of its own riches the articulation and form of its appearance therein; and it is precisely this harmony of the notion with the mode of its external existence which constitutes the essential life of beauty. And the bond which braces all together, no less than the power behind it, is self-conscious life, unity, soul, and artistic personality.
(_b_) We conclude, then, that if we consider beauty in its relation to conscious life, on the _subjective_ side that is, it is neither to be adequately apprehended by an intelligence that persists in the unfree medium of purely finite existence, nor is it the object of the finite Will. We will enlarge a little on both points.
As finite intelligence we are aware in feeling of the inner no less than the outer objects of consciousness; we observe them, perceive them to be true to our senses, allow them to form part of the content of our perceptions, concepts, and finally, no doubt, to become the abstractions which our understanding presents to us, reflecting on their appearance, and endowing them with the abstract form of universality.
Now the finiteness and absence of freedom inseparable from this mental attitude consists in the assumption that the things perceived are self-subsistent. We direct our attention to these objects, suffer them to impress us, form our ideas of them, possessed with the faith in their material existence as objects, and convinced that all we have to do is to perceive them as they appear to our passive reception, to preserve, in short, the formal side of our attention intact, holding such unfettered by our fancies, opinions, and prejudices.
In thus accepting this one-sided freedom of objects we posit at the same time the want of freedom in their mental apprehension. To such the content is one wholly _given_ from outside; and instead of a true self-determination through difference we have nothing but the reception and acceptance of what is presented as a part of the objective thing. We would arrive at truth by the suppression of all that belongs to ourselves[198].
A criticism of like nature, though the defect is here just at the other extreme, may be applied to the finite _Will._ In this theory interests, objects, intentions, and conclusions are all relegated to the subject, whose will it is to enforce them as against the existence and properties of the material thing. This it can only do by the annihilation of the object itself, or at least, in so far as it can modify or change its form and energies, by transmuting its qualities, or permitting them to exercise such a change on each other, as water may exercise on fire, fire on iron, iron on wood, and so forth. We now find that it is the particular things, which the subject has enrolled in its service, as things to be regarded and treated as _useful_, which in their turn have been deprived of their self-subsistence.
In other words, they have come to be regarded as objects, whose notion and meaning is not their own, but derived from the reflecting consciousness, so that what is most essential to them is precisely this relation of service in which they stand to the subjective purpose, that is, our own intelligence. The values of either side of the relation are thus completely reversed. The objective thing has lost freedom and the conscious subject secured it. As a matter of fact, the freedom on _both_ aspects of the relation is, owing to the finitude and abstraction it implies under such a view, a purely supposititious one.
In the sphere of _theory_ here it is the assumed independence of the objective world which creates the finitude and bondage of the conscious Ego. In that of the practical world this dependence is due to its one-sidedness, the conflict and contradiction of its aims within and the impulses and passions which press from without, no less than to the unreconciled opposition of a world of objects. For the separation and opposition of these two aspects of one whole, that is, objects and relating self-conscious life, is presupposed in, and indeed is an accurate definition of, this point of view.
And, similarly, with reference to the lack of freedom in the object.
Here, too, in the sphere of intelligible conception, the independence of the object is assumed, but the freedom assumed is only apparent. For it is only posited as bare objectivity without securing the presence of its notion, as the unity and universality of the conscious subject, within such objectivity. It still remains outside it. Every object thus placed external to the notion merely exists as particularity, which comes back to us in external guise together with its manifold, and is, in all the unlimited scope of its relations, through its contact with other objects, subject to the conditions of its origin, change, opposing force and final overthrow. In the _practical_ world the dependence of the object is expressly, in this view, assumed, and the opposition of the thing is posited in definite relation to volition without possessing in itself the power of ultimate self-subsistency permitted to the latter.
(_c_) The apprehension of the object as _beautiful_ unites these two abstract points of view. It in fact annuls the one-sidedness of both whether relatively to the subject of consciousness or its object, and by doing so cancels the finitude and lack of freedom which characterize them.
Philosophically regarded[199], the reason is this, that the object is not apprehended in its existence as an isolated thing whose notion as the object of human thought is removed from the objectivity which belongs to it as something outside it, and which in its particular reality extends and is dissipated in every conceivable direction as a manifold content of intelligible relations. An object which is beautiful suffers its own notion to appear as realized in its objective presence, and reveals in that appearance the unity and life inseparable from the conscious subject. For this reason the object may be conceived as sweeping back into the curve of its unity that impulse of continuous externality, cancelling its dependence on other objects, and transmuting to our vision its unfree finitude into free infinity.
Furthermore, the Ego in its relation to the object of beauty ceases to be merely the abstract attention or sensuous perception, and the floating away of such perceptions into equally abstract reflections.
Rather, it is itself concretely realized in this object, being at once the unity and reality of its notional idea, and uniting for itself in its rounded concreteness that which has hitherto remained, as abstractly perceived, apart in the Ego of the subject of perception and the thing perceived.
Coming now to the practical import of this relation as it applies to the object of beauty, we have already drawn attention to the fact at some length, that in the contemplation of it the element of sensuous passion drops away. All personal impulse that the individual may feel toward the object is done away with through that very aesthetic contemplation, which regards it as self-subsistent in itself, in other words, its own object. For this reason, the purely finite relation of the object also disappears, the relation, that is, in which it subserved, as a means for their realization, aims which were foreign to it, and towards the fulfilment of which it was either presented as unfree or was compelled to take up, however strange, into its own existence. At the same time that relation of the Ego in the practical world which we found to be unfree disappears, inasmuch as it differentiates itself no longer in subjective motives and their means or material, remaining fixed in the finite relation of the formal "ought" for the carrying out of its subjective ends in the object, but is here confronted with the notion and its aim completely realized.
We may say, then, that the aesthetic contemplation of the beautiful is a liberal education, a portrayal of the object in its free and infinite being, with no detracting consideration of its use or employment for finite wants and purposes. Further, the _object_ as a _thing of beauty_ is neither under force or compulsion at our hands, nor is it in conflict with and overcome by other things outside it. It is of the essence of beauty that the notion, end and soul thereof, no less than its existent form, and variety generally, manifest themselves out of their own intrinsic wealth rather than through the energy of something outside them. The reason of this lies in the fact, already insisted upon, that their truth consists solely in the unity and harmony of their notion with their objective existence. And inasmuch as the notion is itself concrete totality, its objective reality also appears as a manifestation of the same, homogeneous in all its parts, which, as thus imbedded in the notion, appear to fall into such ideal unity and animation. For this harmony of the notion and its envisagement is nothing less than perfected suffusion[200]. Accordingly the exterior form and shape is manifested, not as such by its separation from other material, or as an impression mechanically related to aims which are foreign to it, but as the form of reality wherein the notion accommodates itself out of its own stuff and substance. Finally, however much the particular aspects, parts or articulations of the beautiful object are presented in the ideal unity of the notion and its unified envisagement, that harmony must be so rendered visible to sense, that in relation to one another they preserve the semblance of self-subsistent freedom; in other words they must not only possess the ideal unity of the _notion as such_, but must reflect back the side of a reality which is substantially objective also. Both aspects, in short, must be present in beautiful objects; for these are, on the one hand, the _necessity_ posited through the notion and discovered in the harmonious conclusion of these particular aspects, and on the other, the envisagement of their freedom as essentially one with the whole, and _not merely_ that of the _unity_ which exists between the parts. Necessity in its full definition means the just relation of the two aspects, which coalesce so completely that to posit one is to posit the other. Such a necessity must unquestionably be present in beautiful objects. It is not, however, under the mode of necessity that it appears; rather it should conceal itself beneath the semblance of unintentional accident. Otherwise the particular parts of such a real presence lose the position they should occupy according to their own real existence, and only appear in the service of their ideal unity, to which they therefore remain in abstract subordination.
In virtue of the freedom and infinitude above analysed, which is inherent in the notion of beauty, whether we view it in its objective presence as a thing of beauty, or under its aesthetic contemplation, we disengage the province of the beautiful from the relations of finite condition, to exalt it into that of the Idea and its truth.
[Footnote 188: This is, of course, a note of Hegel himself.]
[Footnote 189: This, of course, has reference to Hegel's unfortunate belief in Goethe's theory of colour.]
[Footnote 190: Mediated (_vermittelt_), because the concrete is first apprehended through its differences, and only after reflection do we arrive at the notional unity which transcends and unites them.]
[Footnote 191: _Momente._ Phases asserted and reconciled in the evolved notional unity, organic or otherwise. The notion is subjective because it is an ideal unity.]
[Footnote 192: The text is clearly corrupt. The full-stop after _herzustellen_ should be a comma, and _auch_ would be preferably changed to _als die._] [Footnote 193: As essentially reason.]
[Footnote 194: Not the substantive, but past participle.]
[Footnote 196: _Verstand_ in the technical sense of Kant's philosophy; that is, the faculty of scientific observation or ordinary perception--analytical, in contrast to reason (_Vernunft_), the synthetic faculty.]
[Footnote 197: Infinite, that is to say, as human freedom is infinite, as mind is infinite, an ideal totality, a whole complete in itself, not an endless progress, which is a contradiction.]
[Footnote 198: Or, as Hegel says, "by suppressing the subjective principle altogether."]
[Footnote 199: _Theoretischen_ here used in sense of true philosophical theory, not one-sided views as above.]
through all parts.]
CHAPTER II THE BEAUTY OF NATURE Beauty is the Idea as the immediate unity of the notion and its objective reality, yet is only the Idea in so far as its unity is immediately present in shape apprehensible to the senses and as semblance of the real. The most elementary form of existence, which the Idea take to itself is _Nature_, and the first form of beauty is that of _Nature._ A. THE BEAUTY OF NATURE AS SUCH 1. In the world of Nature we must distinguish between the modes according to which the notion becomes existent reality in order to be part of the Idea.
(_a_) In the _first_ place the notion is absorbed so immediately in pure objectivity, that, in its character of subjective and ideal unity, it wholly fails to assert itself, and passes over instead as a thing without a soul into the raw _materia_ presented to sense. The purely mechanical or physical bodies in their isolated singularity are of this order. A particular metal is, for example, essentially no doubt a manifold of mechanical and physical qualities; every part of it, however, has such qualities equally in itself. Such a body not merely fails to possess any entire articulation of its parts in the sense that every one of its different parts receives for itself a particular material existence, but even the negative ideal unity of such differentiation is absent, which might assert itself as animating principle[201]. The difference here is a purely abstract multiplicity, and the unity posited the indifferent equilibrium of identical qualities.
This is the first mode of the existence of the notion. The differences here receive no independent existence, and the ideal unity is not found as ideality. For this reason such isolated bodies are essentially defective and abstract existences.
(_b_) Natural objects of a higher order suffer the differences asserted by the notion to appear as free, so that each one as external to another is itself independently existent. Here we have for the first time the true character of objectivity. Objectivity is just this independent assertion of the segregated differences determined by the notion. On this plane of existence the notion asserts itself in such a way that it is at least a totality of its differences, which is truly realized, in so far as the particular bodies, while they each severally possess independent existence for themselves, are at the same time members of _one inclusive system._ Of such a character is the solar system. In one aspect of them the sun, comets, moon, and planets appear as independent heavenly bodies apart from one another; in another, however, they derive their definite character from being parts of one system of such material bodies. Not only their specific modes of motion, but also their physical qualities, are only to be deduced from their relation to this system. This nexus which binds them together constitutes that inward unity which relates these particular existences together in one whole.
But further than this, in this conception of system the operation of the notion is not exhausted in the _existent unity_ of independent bodies as essential parts of it. For just as the differences are real the unity which relates them to the totality has to assert itself as real. This unity, in other words, differentiates itself from the multifold particularity of those objective bodies of which it is the integrating principle. And on this plane of existence it is differentiated therefore itself against such a particularity as real, independent and objective existence. In the solar system the sun exists over against all particularity related to that system, as such a unity of the system.
Such a material existence of the ideal unity of the notion is still very defective; for whereas on the one hand we have this unity posited in its reality only as the relation or material connection between the severally independent bodies, on the other we have it posited as a body which belongs to that system, whose unity, in opposition to its real differences, it essentially represents. The sun, in short, which we take to be[202] the soul of the system, has itself an independent entity apart from the members which form the explicit content of this soul. It is itself only _one_ particular mode or phase of the notion, that, namely, of unity in its _difference_ from the actual separation of the several parts, a unity which remains outside itself, and is consequently abstract. For however much the sun by virtue of its physical quality is plainly a principle of unity, the illuminating body as such, this is after all merely an abstract identity. For light is simple, undifferentiated appearance and nothing more. We find therefore in the solar system the unity of the notion indeed objective, and the totality of its differences explicitly realized, each body making visible _one_ particular phase[203] of the notion; but here, too, it lies absorbed in its objective reality, and it fails to assert itself in such material as is truly inherent and explicit ideality.
The form of its existence which here prevails remains the independent segregation of its particular phasal units[204].
It is, however, essential to the true existence of the notion, that the _differences_ of the objectively real, the reality, that is to say, of the separate independent parts and the equally independent unity that is therein objectively realized, should as such be together brought back into unity. Only thus such a totality of innate differences can make wholly explicit either the notion as the realized differentiation of its characteristics, or at the same time release each particular that belongs to it from the element of isolated independence which it cancels by enabling the ideality, in which these differences recover their subjective unity, to assert itself fully as the universal principle of their animated being. In that case they become no longer _parts_ hanging loosely to one another by a bond that still leaves their particularity unaffected, but genuine _members_ of one body.
They no longer possess an existence in their isolated singularity, but retain such truly in the ideal unity which binds them together.
Only in such an organic articulation the ideal unity of the notion is present to the parts thus integrated. It is at once their support and immanent soul; here for the first time the notion is not overwhelmed in objective reality, but passes over into actual existence as the inward identity and universality, which it essentially is.
(_c_) But this _third_ mode of Nature's manifestation is a determinate existence of the _Idea_, and the Idea as thus manifested in Nature is _Life._ Dead or inorganic nature is not adequate to express the Idea; only the organic life of Nature unfolds its reality. For in life we shall find, _first_, that the objective reality of the notion as differentiated is presented as such reality; _secondly_, however, that the negation of such differences is entirely one of distinction in that reality[205], the ideal subjectivity of the notion overcoming to itself this very reality; _thirdly_, the unifying principle of animation is now the positive appearance of the notion in the form of its bodily substance, that is to say, the form of infinity, which is sufficiently powerful to assert itself thus formally in its content.
(_α_) If we ask ordinary consciousness[206] for a definition of Life, we have two determinations presented, either the imaginative conception of it as bodily life, or as soul-life. In the same view we distinguish these two determinations with qualities peculiarly belonging to each.
This _contrast_ we set up between soul and body is also of great importance in the more philosophical consideration of our subject. And it is no less part of our inquiry to investigate it. At the same time we would point out that the philosophical interest concentrates itself quite as much on the _unity_ which exists between soul and body, a part of this inquiry which a really adequate survey of the subject has at all times found beset with the greatest difficulties. It is, however, precisely in virtue of this unity that Life is the first genuine appearance of the Idea in Nature. We must consequently apprehend the identity of soul and body as no fortuitous connection[207], but a union of profounder significance. In other words, we must recognize the body and its members as the objective existence of the notion itself in systematic articulation, which in the members of the living organism, secures an objective existence for its determinate features, analogously no doubt, if on a higher plane, to the facts presented by the solar system. Within this real existence the notion asserts itself in like manner as the ideal unity of all these determinate parts. This ideal unity is the soul. The soul is the substantive unity and interfused universality which is no less a simple relation of self-determining than it is ideal Being-for-itself or self-coherent totality. This is the higher view of the union between soul and body.
To put it in other words both are not merely distinct aspects set side by side; they are one and the same totality of identical determinants.
Just as the Idea generally can only be grasped in its explicit reality as the notion evolving itself as such[208], in which conception the differentiation and unity of both sides, that is both the notion and its objective reality, are inseparably present, in the same way Life must be conceived as the unity of both soul and body.
And further, the subjective no less than substantive unity of soul within the body is presented us and exemplified in Feeling. The feeling of a living organism is, that is to say, not merely an independent product of a particular member, but it is also this ideal and simple unity of the entire organism. It is carried through every member of the body is felt throughout in more than a hundred places at once; and indeed, to put it shortly, rather than saying there are many thousand sensitive points[209] in a single organism we should more justly say there is but one, namely, the subject of consciousness. And inasmuch as the animating principle of organic Nature includes in itself this distinction between the real existence of the organic members, and the abstract or simple self-coherence within such parts, which we call the growing soul, mediating between them both by virtue of its inherent unity, such a principle of Life stands on a higher plane than that of inorganic Nature. Only with Life is the Idea existent, and only thus is the Idea truth. No doubt even in the organic world this truth can be extinguished. We find the body unable to perfect its essential ideality and animating energy. Such is the case in disease. Here we find the notion deprived of its controlling sovereignty, and other powers are potent with it. Such a life is, however, defective and crippled: it merely continues, because the inadequacy of reality to the notion has not reached the point of absolute contradiction; it is still only relatively valid. Once assume that all harmony between the two sides is broken, that all genuine articulation of the members of the body and their true identity has dropped away, and life is dissolved in death.
The several members are now mere appendages to each other, with no principle of Life to hold them in unsevered unity.
(_β_) We must add that when we stated the soul is the totality of the notion regarded as the subjective and ideal unity, the body on the other hand, as distinguished by its members, is the same totality but rather in its material aspect as the juxtaposition and sensuous accretion of all the several parts, affirming at the same time that both soul and body are posited as _one_ in the living organism, there is no doubt something contradictory in the statement. For the ideal unity, so far from being this material juxtaposition of parts, in which each particularity possesses its independent consistency and exclusive character, is rather in direct antithesis to such external reality.
That what is diametrically opposed should nevertheless be identical is obviously a contradiction in terms. The man, however, who declares the non-existence of anything from the fact that it carries in our notion of it a contradiction which implies the identity of opposed antitheses, simply excludes Life itself from the idea of existence. For the force of Life and still more the power of Spirit (mind) consists in this very movement, namely, to assert the law of contradiction inherent within them, to bear the burden thereof and to overcome it. This affirmation and resolution of the contradiction which obtains between the ideal unity and material juxtaposition of the members, constitutes the appointed _process_ of life itself. And Life is simply _process._ And this process of life includes an activity which has two distinct functions. On the one hand it has continually to affirm the material existence of the physical distinctions[210] among the members of the organism thus determined; on the other, just in proportion as such distinctions grow obdurate in their independent particularity, and tend to remain fixed in absolute separation from each other, it has to make good once more that universal ideality, which is the principle of their life. This is the idealism of Life's process. Philosophy is not the only idealism; far from it. Nature herself in her domain of actuality creates in the life-process just that which the philosophy of idealism completes in the world of contemplative thought. Only where we have these two aspects of one activity, that is, the constant realization of the corporeal definition of the organism no less than the synthetic affirmation of such material presentment in the ideal unity, which it is as one with the notion[211], then and only then we have the completed process of Life, whose more primitive forms[212], however, this is not the place to discuss. Through this unity of Life's energy in both its branches all the members of the organism are up held in their integrity, and continually flushed anew with the ideality of their life. This ideality is furthermore declared by the organic parts in the fundamental law of their being, that this unity of Life is not so much an accidental quality as, on the contrary, the substance of it.
In this alone they are able to preserve their specific character. This it is which precisely constitutes the difference between the part of a mere conglomerate and the member of an organism. The particular parts of a house, for example, the stones, windows, and so forth, remain just what they are, whether they form part of the structure of a house, or whether they do not. Their relationship to one another is quite indifferent, and the conceptual notion remains in their case a purely external form, which possesses no life in these parts raising them to the ideality of a subjective unity.
The members of an organism have, it is true, an external reality, but for all that it is the notion of Life which constitutes the inward, nay, the characteristic being of such reality, a reality which is not expressed through one external form uniting them, but in the ideal coherence of their parts in one living whole. For this reason the limbs have no such reality as belongs to the stones of a building, or the planets, moon, and comets in the solar system. Their reality is one wholly within the content of the organism, and all appearance to the contrary is, as such, ideally imposed on them. Dissever the hand from the body and it loses its independent existence as a member of the organism which made it what it was. Its activity, form, and colour, all that constitutes it, is at once changed; it enters the process of corruption, and ultimately ceases to exist[213]. Consistent character it only possesses as a limb of organic life, reality only in constant reunion with that ideal unity which sustains it. And that is just the superior mode of reality which the living organism possesses in itself.
The real or positive is for ever being set up as both the negation of itself and withal the ideal resumption of itself, such ideality constituting, in fact, both the maintenance and specific character of the mode under which each of the separate parts of the bodily presence are associated together.
(_γ_) The reality, then, which the Idea wins for itself in the life of Nature is reality as a phenomenal process. Such an _appearance_ stated in its simplest terms is this, that a reality exists, but its potential being[214] is not immediately in its possession, rather it is at the same time negatively affirmed[215] in the particular form that belongs to it. The negation of the immediately external and particular members of a body is not only a negative relative relation as the activity of the inherent idealization[216], but is as such a positive realization[217].
Hitherto we have considered the particular objects of the real as positive in their self-exclusive particularity. This independence, however, is negated in the living object, and the ideal unity asserted within the bodily organism is alone found to assert over itself the full force of positive determination. Such a positive ideality in the principle of negation it asserts is the soul. On the appearance of the soul in the body we have at once such an affirmative presence as the one indicated. The soul not merely asserts itself as a power against the subdivision of the bodily members, it is their plastic creator[218], which preserves as inward and ideal that which is externally minted in the shape of physical members. And consequently it is this very positive and ideal inward[219] which appears in the outer structure; in other words, the external, so far as it is a mere external, is a mere abstraction, a mere aspect that is untrue for the whole. In organic life the external we are confronted with is an externality through which the inward is made visible. The outward, that is to say, declares itself in its potential nature as that inward, which is its notion. Further to this notion appertains the reality in which it as notion is made visible. Inasmuch, however, as in the objective world the notion, strictly as such, is the principle of subjective life and self-determined life becoming _explicit_ in its own objective reality[220], life exists only as a _living thing_, an individual subject. It is only with life thus concentrated to a point that we find this negating _centrum_ of unity. And it is negative in this sense that the ideal explicitly self-unified totality[221] can only now stand forth in its reality by virtue of this principle of ideality being asserted through the differentiation of its positive presence, together with which the ideal unity of such totality is at the same time incorporated. It is of the greatest importance to make clear this aspect of the principle of subjectivity. It is only as the single living thing thus unified by such a principle that life is actually present.