The process of Perceiving and Understanding

^'279' If we see the difference between this way of framing laws and previous forms, it will clear up its nature completely.

The process of perceiving and understanding (intelligence) reflects itself into itself, and by so doing determines its object.

Understanding does not there have before itself in its object the relation of these abstract determinations, universal and individual, essential and external.

On the contrary, understanding is itself the actual transition, the relational process, and to itself this transition does not become objective.

Here, the organic unity, i.e. just the relation of those opposites, is itself the object. This relation is a pure process of transition.

This process in its simplicity is directly universality; and in that universality opens out into different factors, whose relation it is the purpose of the law to express, the moments of the process take the form of being universal objects of this mode of consciousness, and the law runs, “the outer is an expression of the inner”.

Understanding has here grasped the thought of the law itself, whereas formerly it merely looked for laws in a general way, and their moments appeared before it in the shape of a definite and specific content, and not in the form of thoughts of laws.

As regards content, therefore, such laws ought not to have place in this connexion which merely passively accept and put into the form of universality purely existential distinctions; but such laws as directly maintain in these distinctions the restless activity of the notion as well, and consequently possess at the same time necessity in the relation of the two sides.

Yet, precisely because that object, organic unity, directly combines the endless superseding, or the absolute negation of, existence with inactive passive existence, and because the moments are essentially pure transition — there are thus not to be found any such merely existent aspects as are required for the law.

^'280' To get such aspects, intelligence must take its stand on the other moment of the organic relation, viz. on the fact that organic existence is reflected into itself.

But this mode of being is so completely reflected into self that it has no specific character, no determinateness of its own as against something else, left over.

The immediate sensuous being is directly one with the determinate quality as such, and hence inherently expresses a qualitative distinction, e.g. blue against red, acid against alkaloid, etc.

But the organic being that has returned into itself is completely indifferent towards an other; its existence is simple universality, and refuses to offer observation any permanent sense distinctions, or, what is the same thing, shows its essential characteristic to be merely the changing flux of whatever determinate qualities there are.

Hence, the way distinction qua actually existing expresses itself is just this, that it is an indifferent distinction, i.e. a distinction in the form of quantity. In this, however, the notion is extinguished and necessity disappears.

If the content, however, and filling of this indifferent existence, the flux and interchange of sense determinations are gathered into the simplicity of an organic determination, then this expresses at the same time the fact that the content does not have that determinateness (the determinateness of the immediate property and the qualitative feature falls solely within the aspect of quantity, as we saw above.

^'281' The objective element, apprehended in the form of a determinate character of organic existence, has thus the notion inherent in it.

This distinguishes it from the object offered to understanding.

In apprehending the content of its laws, the object proceeds in a purely perceptive manner.

Yet apprehension in the former case falls back entirely into the principle and manner of mere percipient understanding. This is because the object apprehended is used to constitute moments of a law.

For by this means what is apprehended receives and keeps the character of a fixed determinate quality, the form of an immediate property or a passive phenomenon.

It is, further, subsumed under the aspect of quantity, and the nature of the notion is suppressed.

The exchange of a merely perceived object for one reflected into itself, of a mere sense character for an organic, thus loses once more its value, and does so by the fact that understanding has not yet cancelled the process of framing laws.

^'282' If we compare what we find as regards this exchange in the case of a few examples, we see, it may be, something that perception takes for an animal with strong muscles characterized as an animal organism of high irritability”; or, what perception takes to be a condition of great weakness, characterized as a “condition of high sensibility”, or, if we prefer it, as an abnormal affection”.

Moreover, a raising of it to a “higher power-expressions which translate sensuous facts into Teutonized Latin, instead of into terms of the notion.

That an animal has strong muscles may also be expressed by understanding in the form that the animal “possesses a great muscular force” — great weakness meaning similarly “a slight force”.

Characterization in terms of irritability has this advantage over determination by reference to “force”, that the latter expresses indeterminate, the former determinate reflection into self; for the peculiar force characteristic of muscles is just irritability.

Irritability is also a preferable determination to “strong muscles”, in that, as in the case of force, reflexion into self is at once implied it, it.

In the same way “weakness”, or “slight force”, organic passivity, is expressed in a determinate manner by sensibility.

But when this sensibility is so taken by itself and fixed, and the element of quality is in addition bound up with it, and qua greater or less sensibility is opposed to a greater or less irritability, each is reduced entirely to the level of sense, and degraded to the ordinary form of a sense property.

Their principle of relation is not the notion, but, on the contrary, it is the category of quantity into which the opposition is now cast, thus becoming a distinction not constituted by thought.

While in this way the indeterminate nature of the expressions, “force”, “strength”, “weakness”, would indeed be got rid of, there now arises the equally futile and indeterminate process of dealing with the oppositions of a higher and lower degree of sensibility and irritability, as they increase and decrease relatively to one another.

The greater or less sensibility or irritability is no less a sensuous phenomenon, grasped and expressed without any reference to thought, than strength and weakness are sense determinations not constituted by thought.

The notion has not taken the place of those non-conceptual expressions; instead, strength and weakness have been given a filling by a characteristic which, taken by itself alone, rests on the notion, and has the notion as its content, but loses entirely this origin and character.

Owing to the form of simplicity and immediacy, then, in which this content is made an element of a law, and through the element of quantity, which constitutes the principle of distinction for such determinations, the essential nature, which originally is a notion and is put forward as such, retains the character of sense perception, and remains as far removed from knowledge (Erkennen) as when characterized in terms of strength or weakness of force, or through immediate sense properties.

^'283' There is still left to consider what the outer side of the organic being is when taken by itself alone, and how in its case the opposition of its inner and outer is determined; just as at first we considered the inner of the whole in relation to its own proper outer.

^'284' The outer, looked at by itself, is the embodied form and shape (Gestaltung) in general, the system of life articulating itself in the element of existence, and at the same time essentially the existence of the organism as it is for an other — objective reality in its aspect of self-existence.

This other appears in the first instance as its outer inorganic nature. If these two are looked at in relation to a law, the inorganic nature cannot, as we saw before, constitute the aspect of a law beside the organic being, because the latter exists absolutely for itself, and assumes a universal and free relation to inorganic nature.

^'285' To define more exactly, however, the relation of these two aspects in the case of the organic form, this form, in which the organism is embodied, is in one aspect turned against inorganic nature, while in an other it is for itself and reflected into itself. The real organic being is the mediating agency, which brings together and unites the self-existence of life [its being for itself], with the outer in general, with what simply and inherently is.

The one extreme, self-existence, is, however, the inner in the sense of an infinite “one”, which takes the moments of the embodied shape itself out of their subsistence and connexion with outer nature and withdraws these moments back into itself; it is that which, having no content, looks to the embodied form of the organism to provide its content, and appears there as the process of that form.

In this extreme where it is mere negativity, or pure individual existence, the organism possesses its absolute freedom, whereby it is made quite secure and indifferent towards the fact of its being relative to another and towards the specific character belonging to the moments of the form of the organism. This free detachment is at the same time a freedom of the moments themselves; it is the possibility of their appearing and of being apprehended as existent.

And just as they are therein detached and indifferent in regard to what is outer, so too are they towards one another; for the simplicity of this freedom is being or is their simple substance. This notion or pure freedom is one and the same life, no matter how varied and diverse the ways in which the shape assumed by the organism, its “being, for another”, may disport itself; it is a matter of indifference to this stream of life what sort of mills it drives.

In the first place, we must now note that this notion is not to be taken here, as it was formerly when we were considering the inner proper, in its character as the process or development of its moments; we must take it in its form as simple “inner”, which constitutes the purely universal aspect as against the concrete living reality; it is the element in which the existing members of the organic shape find their subsistence.

For it is this shape we are considering here, and in it the essential nature of life appears as the simple fact of subsistence. In the next place, the existence for another, the specific character of the real embodied form, is taken up into this simple universality, in which its nature lies, a specificity that is likewise of a simple universal non-sensuous kind, and can only be that which finds expression in number. Number is the middle term of the organic form, which links indeterminate life with actual concrete life, simple like the former and determinate like the latter.

That which in the case of the former, the inner, would have the sense of number, the outer would require to express after its manner as multiform reality — kinds of life, colour, and so on, in general as the whole host of differences which are developed as phenomena of life.

^'286' If the two aspects of the organic whole-the one being the inner, while the other is the outer, in such a way that each again has in it an inner and an outer — are compared with reference to the inner both sides have, we find that the inner of the first is the notion, in the sense of the restless activity of abstraction; the second has for its inner, however, inactive universality, which involves also the constant characteristic-number.

Hence, if , because the notion develops its moments in the former, this aspect made a delusive promise of laws owing to the semblance of necessity in the relation, the latter directly disclaims doing so, since number shows itself to be the. determining feature of one aspect of its laws. For number is just that entirely inactive, inert, and indifferent characteristic in which every movement and relational process is extinguished, and which has broken the bridge leading to the living expression of impulses, manner of life, and whatever other sensuous existence there is.

^'287' This way of considering the embodied organic shape as such and the inner qua inner merely of that embodied form, is, however, in point of fact, no longer a consideration of organic existence. For both the aspects, which were to be related, are merely taken thereby reflection into indifferent to one another, and self, the essential nature of organism, is done away with.

What we have done here is rather to transfer that attempted comparison of inner and outer to the sphere of inorganic nature. The notion with its infinity is here merely the inner essence, which lies hidden away within or falls outside in self-consciousness, and no longer, as in the case of the organism, has its presence in an object. This relation of inner and outer has thus still to be considered in its own proper sphere.

^'288' In the first place, that inner element of the form, being the simple individual existence of an inorganic thing, is the specific gravity. As a simply existing fact, this can be observed just as much as the characteristic of number, which is the only one of which it is capable; or properly speaking can be found by comparing observations; and it seems in this way to furnish one aspect of the law.

The embodied form, colour, hardness, toughness, and an innumerable host of other properties, would together constitute the outer aspect, and would have to give expression to the characteristic of the inner, number, so that the one should find its counterpart in the other.

^'289' Now because negativity is here taken not in the sense of a movement of the process, but as an inoperative unity, or as simple self-existence, it appears really as that by which the thing resists the process, and maintains itself within itself, and in a condition of indifference towards it. By the fact, however, that this simple self -existence is an inactive indifference towards an other, specific gravity appears as one property alongside others; and therewith all necessary relation on its part to this plurality, or, in other words, all conformity to law, ceases.

The specific gravity in the sense of this simple inner aspect does not contain difference in itself, or the difference it has is merely non-essential; for its bare simplicity just cancels every distinction of an essential kind.

This non-essential difference, quantity, was thus bound to find its other or counterpart in the other aspect, the plurality of properties, since it is only by doing so that it is difference at all . If this plurality itself is held together within the simple form of opposition, and is determined, say, as cohesion, so that this cohesion is self-existence in otherness, as specific gravity is pure self-existence, then cohesion here is in the first place this pure conceptually constituted characteristic as against the previous characteristic.

The mode of framing the law would thus be what we discussed above, in dealing with the relation of sensibility to irritability. In the next place, cohesion, qua conception of selfexistence in otherness, is merely the abstraction of the aspect opposed to specific gravity, and as such has no existential reality. For self-existence in otherness is the process wherein the inorganic would have to express its self-existence as a form of self-conservation, which on the other hand would prevent it emerging from the process as a constituent moment of a product. But this goes directly against its nature, which has no purpose or universality in it.

Rather, its process is simply the determinate course of action by which its self-existence, in the sense of its specific gravity, cancels itself.

This determinate action, which in that case would constitute the true principle implied in its cohesion, is itself however entirely indifferent to the other notion, that of the determinate quantity of its specific gravity. If the mode of action were left entirely out of account, and attention confined to the idea of quantity, we might be able to think of a feature like this: the greater specific weight, as it is a higher intensiveness of being (Insichseyn), would resist entering into the process more than a less specific weight.

But on the contrary, freedom of self-existence (Fürsichseyn) shows itself only in facility to establish connexion with everything, and maintain itself throughout this manifold variety. That intensity without extension of relations is an abstraction with no substance in it, for extension constitutes the existence of intensity.

The self-conservation of the inorganic element in its relation lies however, as already mentioned, outside its nature, since it does not contain the principle of movement within it or because its being is not absolute negativity and not a notion.

^'290' When this other aspect of the inorganic, on the other hand, is considered not as a process, but as an inactive being, it is ordinary cohesion.

It is a simple sense property standing on one side over against the free and detached moment of otherness, which lies dispersed into a plurality of properties indifferent to and apart from one another, and which itself comes under this (cohesion) as does specific gravity.

The multiplicity of properties together, then, constitutes the other side to cohesion. In its case, however, as in the case of the multiplicity, number is the only characteristic feature. which not merely does not bring out a relation and a transition from one to another of these properties, but consists essentially in having no necessary relation; its nature is rather to make manifest the absence of all conformity to law, for it expresses the determinate character as one that is non-essential.

Thus we see that a series of bodies, whose difference is expressed as a numerical difference of their specific weights, by no means runs parallel to a series where the difference is constituted by the other properties, even if, for purposes of simplification, we select merely one or some of them. For, as a matter of fact, it could only be the tout ensemble of the properties which would have to constitute the other parallel aspect here.

To bring this into orderly shape and to make it a connected single whole, observation finds at hand the quantitative determinations of these various properties; on the other hand, however, their differences come to light as qualitative.

Now, in this collection, what would have to be characterized as positive or negative, and would be cancelled each by the other — in general, the internal arrangement and exposition of the equation, which would be very composite, — would belong to the notion.

The notion however is excluded from operating just by the way in which the properties are found lying, and are to be picked up as mere existent entities. In this condition of mere being, none is negative in its relation to another: the one exists just as much as the other, nor does it in any other fashion indicate its position in the arrangement of the whole.

In the case of a series with concurrent differences — whether the relation is meant to be that of simultaneous increase on both sides or of increase in the one and decrease in the other — interest centres merely in the last simple expression of this combined whole, which would constitute the one aspect of the law with specific gravity for the opposite.

But this one aspect, qua resultant fact, is nothing else than what has been already mentioned, viz. an individual property, say, like ordinary cohesion, alongside and indifferent to which the others, specific gravity among them, are found lying, and every other can be selected equally rightly, i.e. equally wrongly, to stand as representative of the entire other aspect; one as well as the other would merely “represent” or stand for [German vorstellen] the essential reality (Wesen), but would not actually be the fact (Sache) itself.

Thus it seems that the attempt to find series of bodies which should in their two aspects run continuously and simply parallel, and express the essential nature of the bodies in a law holding of these aspects, must be looked at as an aim that is ignorant alike of what it is about and of the means for carrying it through.