Chapter 8

[175]The German word here isGeist.I have translated it as best seems to suit the particular context in which the German word occurs.

[176]Unendliche Negativität.

[177]This is the "Ought" of practical feeling. As such just as in the case of the analytical sciences, what it lacks is objective determination (see "Phil. of Mind," trans. of W. Wallace, p. 94).

[178]In seiner Gemeinde.We should rather expectin seiner Gebiete.

[179]The reference here appears to be to the three attitudes of thought to the objective world which may be generally indicated as that of ordinary consciousness, that of empiricism and that of speculative Philosophy. In the paragraph which follows, however, Hegel mainly refers to the logical process of dialectic and the Idea of Nature (die natürliche Idee.) The latter may, however, refer to both the previous divisions,i.e., the commonsense point of view and the scientific.

[180]The spheres of art and social life are first perceived as merely independent circles of activity.

[181]That is to say, nations have not only found in Art the best means of expressing their religious consciousness, but, even where religion has been raised to a higher power, have found in it the most adequate form in which to express the ideality of their general spiritual life.

[182]Welche sick durch alles hindurchzieht,i.e., which permeates all experience.

[183]In this metaphysical passage Hegel appears to be contrasting his own philosophical standpoint, absolute idealism, with that of critical or empirical philosophy, those at least who conceive reality either as a thing-in-itself, or themateriasupplied to sense-perception from a world outside the human consciousness. The entire content of the Real is, on the contrary, all included under the form of self-conscious thought.

[184]He means, I think, province of the universal, rather than "universal expansion of horizon."

[185]The words of Hegel are "innerhalb derselben im endlichen Geiste die Erinnerung des Wesens aller Dinge." He no doubt has in his mind the derivation of the wordErinnerung.It is theinwardizationor idealization of such substance.

[186]Anschauung, that is to say, it is the object of man's receptive senses.

[187]The punctuation is clearly wrong. It is also very possible thatderselbenis a misprint fordieselbe.But in any case there should be comma rather than semicolon.

To arrive at the Idea of Fine Art in all its concreteness it will be necessary for us to consider it under three phases.

1. Thefirstis concerned with thenotionof the beautiful generally.

2. Thesecondis that ofnaturalbeauty, the defects of which will demonstrate the necessity of theIdealasFine Art.

3. In thethirdof these aspects the subject of our investigation will be theIdealin itspositive realization, in other words as the artistic display of this Ideal in particularworks of art.

We have defined beauty to be the Idea of the beautiful.

1. The Idea. By this definition is implied that we have to conceive the beautiful as Idea, and, moreover, as Idea in a determinate shape, asIdeal.Idea, as thus posited, is just this, the conceptive notion, the realization of the same, and the unity of both. The notion, as such, is not yet the Idea, although the terms notion and idea are often loosely interchanged. Idea is the notion only as presented in, and brought into coalescence with, its objective reality. This unity, however, is by no means to be regarded as the mereneutralizationof notion and reality, so that the individual character and quality of either is absorbed; as, for example, where we find that in a chemical compound salt-potash and acid tend to neutralize each other in so far as they have weakened their opposition. In this unity, on the contrary, the notion is retained as the commanding factor. It is already implicitly, in virtue of its own nature, this very identity. Out of its own wealth it evolves the reality as part of itself, by means of a process which, being no other than that of development, surrenders nothing of its own nature, but brings into more concrete actuality the riches of the notion, and for this reason continues in unity with itself and its objective realization. Such a unity of the notional concept and its realization is the Idea defined in abstract terms. The word idea is, of course, frequently used by authors of works dealing with the theory of art. It must, however, be admitted that many connoisseurs of high standing are particularly severe upon its employment. The latest and most interesting example ofthis polemical attitude is to be found in Herr von Rumohr's "Italian investigations." This work is based on the practical interest that the arts excite, and is wholly unconcerned with that which for brevity we may call the Idea. The truth is that this writer, who appears to have no knowledge of the development of philosophy in modern times, freely confuses the expression as above defined with the undetermined conceptions of the phantasy, or the abstract and characterless Ideal of well-known art theories or schools of art, ideas which present a lean contrast to the clearly defined and richly caparisoned objects of Nature in their truth, and which this writer opposes to the idea and empty Ideal, which the artist himself evolves from his own consciousness. We have, of course, no more right to suppose that creative work can be the result of such poverty, than we can with justice assume that a thinker can think with conceptions wholly indeterminate, and persist in his thought with a content destitute of all defined relation. Such an objection, however, does not apply in any respect to the Idea in the sense we use the expression. This Idea is through and through concrete; a whole which consists of relations and is simply beautiful from being in direct union with the objective form adequate to its expression.

Herr von Rumohr has placed on record in this very book (Book I, pp. 145-46) the following assertion, that "beauty in the most comprehensive meaning of the term, and as it is understood by intelligent people of our day, includes every quality of an object, which may either stir the sense of sight with satisfaction, or through that sense attune the soul and delight the mind."

These qualities are then further subdivided into three classes as follows: "First, there is all that is perceptible through the eye; secondly, that which is apprehended by means of the peculiar, presumably innate sense of mankind for spatial relations; and thirdly, all that in the first instance works upon the understanding, and only indirectly through cognition on the emotions." This third and most important determination rests apparently on forms "which quite independently of all pleasure to the sense and the beauty of extended shape arouse in us a specific delight which is ethical or spiritual in its quality, which in part to all appearanceproceeds from the enjoyment we derive from the images excited (I presume he means ethical or spiritual ones)[188], and in part from the pleasure which the mere activity of an intelligent appreciation infallibly brings with it."

Such are the principal factors according to which this undoubted connoisseur of art defines his subject relatively to the beautiful. It may very possibly pass muster with a certain type of uncritical reader. It is, however, very unsatisfactory regarded from the philosophical standpoint. For what does it at bottom amount to but this, namely, that the sense of vision or spiritual sense, we may add the understanding itself, are moved pleasurably, or excite a feeling which results in awakened pleasure. The entire argument hinges on this one aspect of awakened gratification. This reduction, however, of the activity of the beautiful to terms of feeling—that which pleases and charms us—has been disposed of once for all by Kant. His exposition has already left far behind the feeling for the beautiful.

We will direct our attention now from this polemical tractate to a further consideration of the Idea its hostility has failed to weaken. In this, as already stated, is comprehended the concreteunityof thenotionand its objective realization.

(a) Now, first, we will observe, in directing our attention more closely to the essential nature of the notion, that it is no purelyabstract unityopposed to thedifferencesofphenomenal reality; rather, as the notion, it is already the unity that integrates those relations, and by doing so is concrete totality. The abstract conceptions such as man, the quality blueness, and their like, are not notions as such at all, but rather should be called abstract general concepts, which are only raised to the dignity of the notion, when we have demonstrated that they contain opposing factors in unity, and, in such a way, that this self-related nexus of unity constitutes their notional truth. For instance, the concept "blueness" as a colour receives such a notional value when it is grasped as the unity, and, indeed, the specific unity of light and darkness[189]. In the same way the concept "man" containswithin it the opposing factors of sense, life, and reason, body and mind (spirit); but a particular man is not to be regarded as a whole consisting in some way of these two aspects of his personality placed in a relation of indifference side by side as constituents of the same. Rather, in virtue of the notion, such a whole contains these constituents in concrete and mediated[190]union. Add to this that the notion is so completely the absolute bond and unity of its differences, that independently they cease to exist, they are unable to assert the particularity, in virtue of which they might escape from such a union. For this reason the notion includes all its determining constituents in the form of its ownideal unityand universality, which constitute itssubjectivecharacter in contradistinction from the real as the object of sense-perception. For example, gold is, as a particular object, of specific weight, definite colour, and placed in a certain relation to specific acids. Such are varied characteristics of gold, and yet are invariably found in a unified whole. The smallest speck contains them all in inseparable union. By analysis or abstraction we indeed separate them, but in their notion they are inseparably one. The inability of the differences, which the notion in its truth essentially possesses, to stand alone in their isolated self-identity is of a similar nature. A still more apposite illustration is presented by the unique concept of the self-conscious Ego in its universality. For that which we call soul, or more appositely the Ego, is the notion itself in its free existence. The Ego contains a congeries of most distinct concepts and thoughts in itself; it is a world of ideas; yet none the less this infinitely complex content, in so far as it lies within the Ego, remains without a vestige of substantiality or materiality packed within this ideal unity, as the pure and throughout fluid transparency of the Ego itself reflected to itself. And this is precisely the way in which the notion retains its varied determinations in ideal unity.

The determinants of the notion which are most cognate to the notion as such are theuniversal, theparticular, and thesingle. Every one of these determinate qualities takenby itself is a mere abstraction. As thus regarded, however, abstract, that is to say, from one another, they are not present in the notion: that is rather their idealunity.The notion is therefore the universal, which, on the one hand, negates itself to a condition of relativity andparticularization, but, on the other, this riving asunder, in so far as it is negation of the universal, is itself againannulled.For the universal as present in the particular, which itself is only the particular aspects of theuniversalitself is present in no particular absolutely, but rather in that very particular reaffirms once more its essential unity as universal. In this return upon itself the notion is infinite negation; negation, I mean, not as against another, but self-determination, in which alone it subsists in its positive and correlative unity. In this way it issingularityin its truth; it is the universal nexus which shuts itself up with itself in its particulars. As the highest example of this property of the notion we would refer back to what we have already, if in a summary way, said about the essential activity of Spirit.

Through this infinite capacity of return upon itself the notion is already, by virtue of its intrinsic wealth, totality. It finds the unity of itself in the being of another, and for this reason possesses a free activity, being, however, negation as self-determination, not as the alien limitation of its own substance through something other than itself. But regarded as such totality the notion is already in potential possession of all phenomenal reality, and is that which mediates and restores the unity of the Idea. And whoever ventures to think that in the Idea we have presented to us something totally different and apart from the notion, has as little knowledge of the nature of the Idea as he has of the notion. At the same time there is, no doubt, a difference between the notion and the Idea, and it is this: in the former the particularization is only an abstract particularization, for this reason that in the notion the determinate relations are alone coherent in its transparent medium, that is to say, in its unity and ideal universality. The notion, therefore, itself remains subject to the one-sidedness of its particular material, and is hampered with the defect that although in its own nature it is a totality, yet it is only in the aspect of it as unity and universality that it is entitled to free self-development.But inasmuch as this defect in its completeness is foreign to its own essential form, the process of its activity is to remove it. It negates itself as this very ideal unity and universality and allows that which is enclosed in the barren chamber of ideal subjectivity to flow forth freely into real and substantiveobjectivity.In other words, the notion through its own activity posits itself as objective reality.

(b) Objectivity is therefore, truly apprehended, thereal existenceof thenotion.It is, however, the notion under the mode of self-substantive particularization and of a differentiation of allantitheticalphases[191]of reality, whose ideal unity the notion in its subjective capacity constituted.

But inasmuch as it is thenotion, and only the notion, whose function it is to endow objectivity with its determinate existence and reality, so too it is only through objectivity that thenotionis unveiled in its actuality. The notion is, however, the mediating andideal unityof all its particular antitheses. Within its differentiated reality this ideal unity, effective throughout particularity in modes adequate to the notion, has to establish itself in them, precisely in a way similar to that in which the realized particularity of their unity, as thus mediated to the point of ideality, has also to exist in them[192]. This is the might of the notion, which refuses to surrender or forfeit its universality among thedisjecta membraof the objective world, but rather reveals its essential unity through such reality and within it. For it is nothing less than the very life of the notion to preserve its unity in the material which is offered it. Only by so doing is it real and veritable totality.

(c) This totality is theIdea.The Idea is not simply the ideal unity and subjectivity of the notion. It is quite as much its true and objective reality; it is, however, an objectivity which does not confront the notion as an opposing factor, but is rather that in which the notion itself is self-determined. In whichever aspect we contemplate the notion,whether as subjective to our apprehension, or as objectively real, the Idea it manifests is a totality. But it is more than this. It is the unity which for ever is mediating between and bringing into more perfected harmony the two totalities. Only as thus apprehended is the Idea truth and indeed all truth.

2. All that exists, then, has only truth in so far as it is a definite existence of the Idea. For the Idea is alone the truly real. The truth of the phenomenal is not derived from the fact that its particular existence is of an inward or external character, and as such is in a general sense reality; it is so wholly in virtue of the fact that such reality is adequate to the notion. Then alone is determinate existence real and true. And the truth, to which we here refer, is not asubjectiveinterpretation of it, namely, that a particular existence is accordant with my own conception of it. It is truth in the objective sense that the reality of the Ego, or of any external object, action, or circumstance actually contributes to the realization of the notion. If this identity is not established the existence remains purely phenomenal. Instead of the objectification of the notion in its completeness what obtains is purely a detached aspect of it; and with regard to this, whatever self-subsistence it may appear to have in opposition to the unity and universality of the notion, such can only work to its final confusion by setting it in hostility to the true 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 isIdea. It follows thatbeautyandtruthare, 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 bedistinguishedfrom 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 theuniversalIdea of thought as present in this. At the same time the Idea is driven to seekits 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 alsobeautiful.Thebeautifulmay therefore be defined as thesensuous 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 theirbeing.In beauty such are posited simply as the determinate existence and externality of the notion, and as a form of reality, which itself manifests thenotionin 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 essentiallyinfiniteand 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 sidedabstraction 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 thesubjectiveside 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 whollygivenfrom outside; and instead of a true self-determinationthrough 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 finiteWill.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 asuseful, 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 onbothaspects of the relation is, owing to the finitude and abstraction it implies under such a view, a purely supposititious one.

In the sphere oftheoryhere 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 thepracticalworld 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 asbeautifulunites 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 perceptionsinto 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, theobjectas athing of beautyis 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 manifestationof 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 thenotion 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, thenecessityposited 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, andnot merelythat of theunitywhich 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.

[188]This is, of course, a note of Hegel himself.

[189]This, of course, has reference to Hegel's unfortunate belief in Goethe's theory of colour.

[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.

[191]Momente.Phases asserted and reconciled in the evolved notional unity, organic or otherwise. The notion is subjective because it is an ideal unity.

[192]The text is clearly corrupt. The full-stop afterherzustellenshould be a comma, andauchwould be preferably changed toals die.

[193]As essentially reason.

[194]Not the substantive, but past participle.

[195]Das sinnliche Scheinen.

[196]Verstandin 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.

[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.

[198]Or, as Hegel says, "by suppressing the subjective principle altogether."

[199]Theoretischenhere used in sense of true philosophical theory, not one-sided views as above.

[200]Vollendete Durchdringung,i.e., a penetration through all parts.

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 isNature, and the first form of beauty is that ofNature.

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 thefirstplace 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 rawmateriapresented 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 differencehere 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 ofone 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 theexistent unityof 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 notionis 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 onlyoneparticular mode or phase of the notion, that, namely, of unity in itsdifferencefrom 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 visibleoneparticular 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 thedifferencesof 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 differentiationof 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 longerpartshanging loosely to one another by a bond that still leaves their particularity unaffected, but genuinemembersof 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 thisthirdmode of Nature's manifestation is a determinate existence of theIdea, and the Idea as thus manifested in Nature isLife.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. Thiscontrastwe set up between soul and body is also of great importancein 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 theunitywhich 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 asonein 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 diametricallyopposed 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 appointedprocessof life itself. And Life is simplyprocess.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 upheld 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 anappearancestated 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 becomingexplicitin its own objective reality[220], life exists only as aliving thing, an individual subject. It is only with life thus concentrated to a point that we find this negatingcentrumof 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.

If we inquire further in what manner the Idea is manifested within the actual life of such living individuals our survey will be as follows:first, this principle of Life will be realized as the totality of an organism possessing bodily shape;secondly, this physical shape is not presented as a rigid product[222], but as a continous process of ideal generation, in which a living soul asserts itself.Thirdly, the changes and determinations through which this totality passes are not imposed externally to it, but are changes of form which are evolved from its inherent nature, imposed on itself and for itself, in a process wherein it stands self-determined as the subjective unity no less than the ultimate end of its being.

This free self-subsistence of the subjective principle of life is especially exemplified in the spontaneous motion of a living organism. The inanimate bodies of inorganic Nature are fettered to the conditions of Space, which limits them to one place, or they are only moved from it by external forces. The motion, in short, does not originate in themselves; and, when it is visible upon them, it appears as anenergy which is foreign to them, to remove which the only force they exert is that of reaction. And if the motion of the planets with similar phenomena appear to be otherwise produced, such are at least wholly fettered by natural laws and their abstract necessity. The living animal, on the contrary, in its freedom of motion, negatives this enforced limitation to one spot by virtue of its own activity. It is through such self-determination the continuous liberation of itself from the material isolation. And for the same reason it is in this freedom of motion, if only in a subordinate degree, the release of itself from the former abstractness referable to the particular modes of motion, their direction and their speed. Under a yet closer view, moreover, the animal, regarded by itself in its organism, presents the same sensuous matter that is moved; and here, too, life is as before a freedom of motion within this organic reality, evidenced in the flow of blood and the movement of the limbs.

Motion, however, is not the only expression of animated life. The free tones of the voice of animals, which are unknown in the inorganic world, where bodies merely roar and clatter through the blow of objects external to them, these already present to us the higher expression of animated subjectivity. The most intimate and vital expression of such ideal activity is, however, brought before us when we find the living individual able to concentrate itself as individuality over against the objective world, while at the same time it appropriates and transfigures that worldfor its own.And this is accomplished in part through observation by means of vision, and partly for practical purposes, in so far as such an individual brings the outer world into subjection to himself, utilizes the same, assimilates it as a means of nourishment, and in this manner continually reproduces his individuality in that objectivealterum.Such a process, of course, as it ascends through stronger organisms, assumes more and more emphatic degrees of unsatisfied desire, assimilation, satisfaction, or satiety.

Such, then, are the activities, in which the notion of animated life makes itself apparent. Moreover, the principle of Ideality thus rendered visible is not merely the result ofourreflection; it isobjectivelyreal itself in the living subject, whose existence consequently we may go so far as to callan objective idealism. And it is the soul, as before stated, which, as this ideal energy, brings about its own manifestation[223], always reducing thepurelyexternal reality of the body to an appearance, and thereby affirming itself as objective totality in that very bodily shape.

2. Now it is as the Idea made objectively visible to the senses that the animated life of Nature isbeautiful; in so far, that is to say, as the truth or the Idea, presented in the form of Nature, where under it first appears, in other words life, is immediately given in the particular shape of reality adequate to it. Owing, however, to its sensuous immediacy the living beauty of Nature is neither beautifulfor itselfnor is the beauty strictly that which isthe outcomeof itself, a product, that is, of its purely objective appearance. The beauty of Nature is only beautiful for another, that isfor us, the consciousness that apprehends its beauty. The question therefore arises in what way and by virtue of what characteristics the principle of life appears to us beautiful in itsimmediateexistence.

(a) If we look at the practical way in which a living object becomes visible and preserves itself, the first thing which rivets our attention isspontaneous motion.This motion, regarded simply as motion, is nothing more than the entirely abstract freedom of motion from place to place and from time to time, which we find exemplified in the spontaneous, but entirely haphazard movements of animal life. In music and the dance we have, it is true, motion in its generic significance; but here motion is not merely a matter of chance and impulse, but it exhibits the laws which regulate it; it is defined, complete in itself and subject to measure; and it is all this, though we still abstract from it the significance whereof it is the beautiful expression. If we again interpret the motion of animals as the realization of an aim originating within themselves, this excited impulse is still entirely accidental, an end of most restricted import. If we further extend our survey and conceive such motion as theactivity and working together of all parts of the animal organism towards a definite purpose, we shall merely find that such a conception is rendered possible by our own effort of imagination[224]. The case is just the same if we reflect upon the way in which an animal gratifies its physical wants, obtains nourishment through the organs which grasp it, consume it, digest it, and generally is a subject of the process which preserves its life. For in this case also we have either only before us single desires and their spontaneous and haphazard gratification, in which the inward activity[225]of the organism is not present at all, or at least all these activities and their means of expression have become the subject of our imaginative reflection, which is at pains to understand such a process by relating it to definite ends, and to establish a harmony between aims assumed to belong to the animal itself and the organs which fulfill them.

We shall rather find that neither the sensuous perception of single haphazard appetites, arbitrary movements and efforts towards self-satisfaction, nor the fanciful consideration of the animal organism as one directed by purpose will present to us purely animal life as a part of the beauty of Nature. The beauty consists in the appearance of individual form, both in repose and motion, quite apart from the relation of its self-gratification to any purpose thus subserved, as it is apart from the entirely isolated contingency of self-imposed movement[226]. Such beauty is related to theformalone, because it is only as such that it is the external appearance, in which the objective idealism of the principle of life makes itself known to us as a thing perceived and contemplated upon through the senses. Thought apprehends this "objective idealism" in the medium of its notion, appropriating the same in the element ofuniversalitywhich belongs to it, albeit the contemplation of itsbeauty is inseparably bound with itsphenomenal reality.And this reality is the external form of the articulated organism, which is, in our view of it, quite as much determinate particularity as it is a semblance, namely, that of the physical manifold of the separate members, which can only form part of the concrete totality of theliving formunder the guise of phenomenal appearance.

(b) From the explanation of the notion of life already given we may deduce more narrowly the form of this appearance as follows. The form is one of spatial extension, limitation, and configuration, distinguished through its various shape, colour, and motion, being, in fact, a manifold of such distinctions. If, however, the organism which manifests these differences is a living organism, it will inevitably appear that the organism does not derive its true existence from such amanifoldand its physical configurations. This is brought about by the fact that the different parts, which are apprehended by us through the senses, are at the same time conjoined together in one totality; they appear consequently as themembersof one individual existence, which is a unity of such differences, and which not merely possesses them in their difference, but as parts of one homogeneous whole.

(α) In the first place, however, this unity will assert itself as thepurposelessidentity of such differences, that is to say with no abstract relation to any causal end whatever. The parts in such a case are not rendered visible to sense merely as a means to or in the service of some defined purpose, nor are they able to fix the determinate relation of form and structure which they occupy one over against the other.

(β) Rather the contrary is the case, for, in thesecondplace, the bodily members have for our sense-perception the appearance of being quiteaccidentalin their form; in other words the determination of one appears to be quite indifferent to that of another. In other words, we can never conclude because one has a certain form another will have the same, as would be the case if a material uniformity was clear between them. Where uniformity is the rule an abstract determination of some kind of form, size, or whatever it may be, is the property of all parts. The windows of a building, for example, are all of one size, or at least are placed together in one row. Or we may illustrate the samesimilarity with the uniform worn by all soldiers belonging to one regiment. We have various parts of such clothing differing in colour, texture and the rest, but their formal opposition is no matter of chance; each has its causal connection with some other; it is there because the other is there. Neither is there here any complete distinction of form, nor any unique independence wholly asserted. With the individual organism of life the case is entirely otherwise. Here every part is absolutely distinguished; the nose from the forehead, the mouth from the cheek, the breast from the neck, the arms from the legs, and so on. Inasmuch as for our sense-perception every member possesses its unique form rather than one which belongs to another, or one which is determined by that of another, the members appear as self-subsistent parts, and for this reason free and spontaneous[227]. For the material juxtaposition of the parts alone throws no light upon their particular form.

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