Observation of Organic Nature

^'267' The other significance of these organic elements, viz. as outer, is their embodiment in a given shape. Here, they assume the form of actual but at the same time universal parts, or appear as organic systems.

For instance:

• sensibility is embodied in the form of a nervous system
• irritability is embodied in the form of a muscular system
• reproduction is embodied in the form of an intestinal system

These are for the preservation of the individual and the species.

^'268' Laws peculiar to organic life, accordingly, concern a relation of the organic moments. This relation takes account of their twofold significance:

1. Of being a part of definite organic formation or embodiment
2. Of being a continuous universal element of a determinate kind, running through all those systems.

Thus, in giving expression to a law of that sort, a specific kind of sensibility, e.g. would find, qua moment of the whole organism, its expression in a determinately formed nervous system, or it would also be connected with a determinate reproduction of the organic parts of the individual or with the propagation of the whole, and so on.

Both aspects of such a law can be observed.

The external is in its very conception being for another; sensibility, e.g. finds its immediately realized form in the sensitive system; and, qua universal property, it is in its outer expressions an objective fact as well.

The “inner” aspect has its own “outer” aspect, which is distinct from what is in general called the outer.

^'269' Both the aspects of an organic law would thus certainly be open to observation, but not the laws of their relation.

Observation is inadequate to perceive these laws because the thought of laws of this sort proves to have no truth at all.

^'270' The universal organic property forms itself into a thing in an organic system.

There, it finds its own embodied copy, so that the copy and the thing are the same reality.

This relation assumes the role of a law.

But besides, the inner aspect is also by itself a relation of several aspects.

Hence to begin with there is presented the idea of a law as a relation of the universal organic activities or properties to one another.

Whether such a law is possible has to be decided from the nature of such a property.

Such a property, however, being universal and of a fluid nature, is, on the one hand, not something restricted like a thing, keeping itself within the distinction of a definite mode of existence, which is to constitute its shape and form: sensibility goes beyond the nervous system and pervades all the other systems of the organism.

On the other hand, such a property is a universal moment, which is essentially undivided, and inseparable from reaction, or irritability, and reproduction. For, being reflection into self, it eo ipso already implies reaction.

Merely to be reflected into itself is to be a passive, or lifeless being, and not ,sensibility; just as action — which is the same as reaction — when not reflected into self, is not irritability.

Reflexion in action or reaction, and action or reaction in reflexion, is just that whose unity constitutes the organic being, a unity which is synonymous with organic reproduction.

It follows from this that in every mode of the organism’s actuality there must be present the same quantity of sensibility — when we consider, in the first instance, the relation of sensibility and irritability to one another — as of irritability, and that an organic phenomenon can be apprehended and determined or, if we like, explained, just as much in terms of the one as of the other.

What one man takes for high sensibility, another may just as rightly consider high irritability. and an irritability of the same degree.

If they are called factors, and this is not to be a meaningless phrase, it is thereby expressly stated that they are moments of the notion; in other words, the real object, the essential nature of which this notion constitutes, contains them both alike within it, and if the object is in one way characterized as very sensitive, it must be also spoken of in the other way as likewise very irritable.

^'271' If they are distinguished, as they must be, they are so in their true nature (dem Begriffe, nach), and their opposition is qualitative.

But when, besides this true distinction, they are also set down as different, qua existent and for thought, as they might be if made aspects of the law, then they appear quantitatively distinct.

Their peculiar qualitative opposition thus passes into quantity; and hence arise laws of this sort, e.g. that sensibility and irritability stand in inverse quantitative relations, so that as the one increases the other diminishes; or better, taking directly the quantity itself as the content, that the, magnitude of something increases as its smallness diminishes.

Should a specific content be given to this law, however, by saying, for example, that the size of a hole increases the more we decrease what it is filled with, then this inverse relation might be just as well changed into a direct relation and expressed in the form that the quantity of a hole increases in direct ratio to the amount of things we take away—a tautological proposition, whether expressed as a direct or an inverse relation; so expressed it comes merely to this that a quantity increases as this quantity increases.

The hole and what fills it and is removed from it are qualitatively opposed. But the real content there and its specific quantity are in both one and the same.

Similarly, the increase of magnitude and decrease of smallness are the same, and their meaningless opposition runs into a tautology.

In like manner the organic moments are equally inseparable in their real content, and in their quantity which is the quantity of that reality.

The one decreases only with the other, and only increases with it, for one has literally a significance only so far as the other is present.

Or rather, it is a matter of indifference whether an organic phenomenon is considered as irritability or as sensibility; this is so in general, and likewise when its magnitude is in question: just as it is indifferent whether we speak of the increase of a hole as an increase of the hole qua emptiness or as an increase of the filling removed from it.

Or, again, a number, say three, is equally great, whether I take it positively or negatively; and if I increase the three to four, the positive as well as the negative becomes four: just as the south pole in the case of a magnet is precisely as strong as its north pole, or a positive electricity or an acid, is exactly as strong as its negative, or the base on which it operates.

An organic existence is such a quantum, like the number three or a magnet, etc. It is that which is increased or diminished, and if it is increased, then both its factors are increased, as much as both poles of the magnet or both kinds of electricity increase if the potential of a magnet or of one of the electric currents is raised.

That both are just as little different in intension and extension, that the one cannot decrease in extension and increase in intension, while the other conversely has to diminish its intension and increase in extension — this comes from the same notion of an unreal and empty opposition. The real intension is absolutely as great as the extension and vice versa.

^'272' What really happens in framing a law of this kind is obviously that at the outset irritability and sensibility are taken to constitute the specifically determinate organic opposition.

This content, however, is lost sight of and the opposition goes off into a formal opposition of quantitative increase and diminution, or of different intension and extension — an opposition which has no longer anything to do with the nature of sensibility and irritability, and no longer expresses it.

Hence this mere playing at law-making is not confined to organic moments but can be carried on everywhere with everything and rests in general on want of acquaintance with the logical nature of these oppositions.

^'273' If, instead of sensibility and irritability, reproduction is brought into relation with one or other of them, then there is wanting even the occasion for framing laws of this kind; for reproduction does not stand in any opposition to those moments, as they are opposed to one another; and since the making of such laws assumes this opposition, there is no possibility here of its even appearing to take place.

^'274' The law-making just considered implies the differences of the organism, taken in the sense of moments of its notion, and, strictly speaking, should be an a priori process.

But it essentially involves this idea, that those differences have the significance of being present as something given, and the attitude of mere observation has in any case to confine itself merely to their actual existence. Organic reality necessarily has within it such an opposition as its notion expresses, and which can be determined as irritability and sensibility, as these again both appear distinct from reproduction. The aspect in which the moments of the notion of organism are here considered, their Externality, is the proper and peculiar immediate externality of the inner; not the outer which is the outer embodied form of the whole organism; the inner is to be considered in relation to this later on.

^'275' If, however, the opposition of the moments is apprehended as it is found in actual existence, then sensibility, irritability, reproduction sink to the level of common properties, which are universals just as indifferent towards one another as specific weight, colour, hardness, etc.

In this sense it may doubtless be observed that one organic being is more sensitive, or more irritable, or has a greater reproductive capacity than another: just as we may observe that the sensibility, etc., of one is in kind different from that of another, that one responds differently from another to a given simulus, e.g. a horse behaves differently towards oats from what it does towards hay, and a dog again differently towards both, and so on. These differences can as readily be observed as that one body is harder than another, and so on.

But these sense properties, hardness, colour, etc., as also the phenomena of responding to the stimulus of oats, of irritability under certain kinds of load, or of producing the number and kind of young — all such properties and phenomena, when related to one another and compared inter se, essentially defy the attempt to reduce them to law.

For the characteristic of their being sensuous facts consists just in their existing in complete indifference to one another, and in manifesting the freedom of nature emancipated from the control of the notion, rather than the unity of a relation — in exhibiting nature’s irrational way of playing up and down the scale of contingent quantity between the moments of the notion, rather than in these forth these moments themselves.

^'276' It is the other aspect, in which tile simple moments of the notion of organism are compared with the moments of the actual embodiment, that would first furnish the law proper for expressing the true outer as the copy of the inner.

Those simple moments are properties that permeate and pervade the whole. This is why they do not find such a detached real expression in the organic thing as to form what we call an individual system with a definite structure (Gestalt).

Or, again, if the abstract idea of organism is truly expressed in those three moments merely because they are nothing stable, but moments of the notion and its process, the organism, on the other hand, qua a definite embodiment, is not exhaustively expressed in those three determinate systems in the way anatomy analyses and describes them.

So far as such systems are to be found in their actual reality and rendered legitimate by being so found, we must also bear in mind that anatomy not only puts before us three systems of that sort, but a good many others as well.

Further, apart from this, the sensitive system as a whole must mean something quite different from what is called a nervous system, the irritable system something different from the muscular system, the reproductive from the intestinal mechanism of reproduction.

In the systems constituting an embodied form (Gestalt) the organism is apprehended from the abstract side of lifeless physical existence: so taken, its moments are elements of a corpse and fall to be dealt with by anatomy; they do not appertain to knowledge and to the living organism.

Qua parts of that sort they have really ceased to be, for they cease to be processes. Since the being of an organism consists essentially in universality, or reflexion into self, the being of its totality, like its moments, cannot consist in an anatomical system.

The actual expression of the whole, and the externalization of its moments, are really found only as a process and a movement, running throughout the various parts of the embodied organism; and in this process what is extracted as an individual system and fixated so, appears essentially as a fluid moment.

So that the reality which anatomy finds cannot be taken for its real being, but only that reality as a process, a process in which alone even the anatomical parts have a significance.

^'277' We see, then, that the moments of the “inner” being of the organism taken separately by themselves are not capable of furnishing aspects of a law of being, since in a law of that sort they are predicated of an objective existence, are distinguished from one another, and thus each aspect would not be able to be equally named in place of the other.

Further, we see that, when placed on one side, they do not find in the other aspect their realization in a fixed system; for this fixed system is as little something that could convey truly the general nature of organic existence, as it is the expression of those moments of the inner life of the organism.

The essential nature of what is organic, since this is inherently something universal, lies altogether rather in having its moments equally universal in concrete reality, i.e. in having them as permeating processes, and not in giving a copy of the universal in an isolated thing.

^'278' In this manner the idea of a law in the case of organic existence slips altogether from our grasp.

The law wants to grasp and express the opposition as static aspects, and to attach as predicates of them the characteristic which is really their relation to one another.

The inner, to which falls the universality appearing in the process, and the outer, to which belong the parts of the static structure of the organism, were to constitute the corresponding sides of the law; but they lose, in being kept asunder in this way, their organic significance.

At the bottom of the idea of law lies just this, that its two aspects should have a subsistence each on its own account indifferent to the other, and the relation of the two sides should be shared between them, thus appearing as a twofold characteristic corresponding to that relation.

But really each aspect of the organism consists inherently in being simple universality, wherein all determinations are dissolved, and in being the process of this resolution.