The Connected System of Universal and Individual

^'291' Heretofore the relation between the inner and outer phases in the organic form set before observation was forthwith transferred to the sphere of the inorganic.

There arises thence a further form and relation of this situation.

What seems to present the possibility of such a comparison of inner and outer in the case of the inorganic, drops away altogether when we come to the organic.

The inorganic inner is a simple inner. It comes before perception as a merely existent property.

Its characteristic determination is therefore essentially quantity.

It appears as an existent property indifferent towards the outer, or the plurality of other sense properties.

The self-existence of the living organism, however, does not so stand on one side opposed to its outer.

It has the principle of otherness in itself.

If we characterize self-existence as a simple self-preserving relation to self, its otherness is simple negativity; and organic unity is the unity of self-identical self-relation and pure negativity.

This unity is qua unity the inwardness of the organic; the organic is thereby inherently universal, it is a genus.

The freedom of the genus with reference to its realization is, however, something different from the freedom of specific gravity with reference to embodied form.

That of the latter is freedom in the sphere of existence (seyende Freiheit), in the sense that it takes its stand on one side as a particular property.

But because it is an existent freedom, it is also only a determinate character which belongs essentially to this embodied form, or by which this form qua essence is something determinate.

The freedom, however, of the genus is a universal freedom, and indifferent to this embodied form, or towards its realization.

The determinateness which attaches to self-existence as such of the inorganic, falls therefore in the case of the organic under its self-existence, while in the case of the inorganic it applies merely to the existence of the latter.

Hence, although in the case of the latter that determinate characteristic appears at the same time only as a property, yet it possesses the value of being essential, because qua pure negative it stands over against concrete existence which is being for another; and this simple negative in its final and particular determinateness is a number.

The organic, however, is a form of singleness, which is itself pure negativity, and hence abolishes within it the fixed determinateness of number, which is applicable to the indifference of mere being.

So far as it has in it the moment of indifferent being and thereby of number, this numerical aspect can therefore only be regarded as an incident within it, but not as the essential nature of its living activity.

^'292' Pure negativity, the principle of the process, does not fall outside the organic.

The organic does not in its essence possess negativity as an adjectival characteristic. This is because the singleness of the individual organism is instead inherently universal.

Yet this pure singleness is not therein developed and realized in its various moments as if these were themselves abstract or universal.

On the contrary, this developed expression appears outside that universality, which thus falls back into mere inwardness.

Between the concrete realization, the embodied form, i.e. the self-developing individual singleness of the organism, and the organic universal, the genus, appears the determinate or specific universal, the species.

The existential form, to which the negativity of the universal, the negativity of the genus, attains, is merely the explicitly developed movement of a process, carried out among the parts of the given shape assumed by the organism.

The genus can have the different parts within itself as an unbroken simple unity. In this way, its simple negativity (as such were at the same time a movement) carried on through parts equally simple and directly universal becomes here actual as such moments. In this case, the organic genus would be consciousness.

But, as it is, the simple determinate character, qua determinateness of the species, is present in an unconscious manner in the genus.

Concrete realization starts from the genus – what finds express realization is not the genus as such, i.e. not really thought.

This genus, qua actual organic fact, is merely represented by a deputy.

Number is the representative here. It:

• designates the transition from the genus into the individual embodiment
• sets before observation the two aspects of the necessary constitution
  • now in the form of a simple characteristic
  • in the form of an organic shape with all its manifold variety fully developed.

This representative, however, really denotes the indifference and freedom of the universal and the individual as regards one another.

The genus puts the individual at the mercy of mere quantitative difference, a non-essential element, but the individual qua living shows itself equally independent of this difference.

True universality, in the way specified, is here merely inner nature. Qua characteristic determining the species it is formal universality. In contrast to the latter, that true universality takes its stand on the side of organic individual singleness, which is thereby a living individual entity, and owing to its inner nature is not concerned with its determinate character qua species.

But this singleness is not at the same time a universal individual, i.e. one in which universality would have external realization as well; i.e. the universal individual falls outside the living organic whole.

This universal individual, however, in the way it is immediately the individual of the natural embodiments of organic life, is not consciousness itself: its existence qua single organic living individual could not fall outside that universal if it were to be consciousness.

^'293' Here is a connected system where:

• one extreme is the universal life qua universal or genus
• the other extreme being that same life qua a single whole, or universal individual

The mediating term is a combination of both.

• The first fits itself into it as determinate universality or as species
• The other fits as single whole proper or single individuality.

This connected system belongs to the aspect of the organic embodiment. It comprehends within it too what is distinguished as inorganic nature.

^'294' The universal life qua the simple essence of the genus:

• develops from its side the distinctions of the notion
• has to exhibit them as a series of simple determining characteristics

This series is a system of distinctions set up indifferently, or is a numerical series.

Whereas formerly the organic in the form of something individual and single was placed in opposition to this non-essential distinction [of quantity], a distinction which neither expresses nor contains its living nature: and while precisely the same has to be stated as regards the inorganic, taking into account its entire existence developed in the plurality of its properties.

It is now the universal individual which is not merely to be looked on as free from every articulation of the genus, but also as the power controlling the genus.

The genus disperses into species in terms of the universal characteristic of number, or again it may adopt as its principle of division particular characteristics of its existence like figure, colour, etc. While quietly prosecuting this aim, the genus meets with violence at the hands of the universal individual, the earth, (5) which in the role of universal negativity establishes the distinctions as they exist within itself, — the nature of which, owing to the substance they belong to, is different from the nature of those of the genus, — and makes good these distinctions as against the process of generic systematization. This action on the part of the genus comes to be quite a restricted business, which it can only carry on inside those mighty elements, and which is left with gaps and arrested and interrupted at all points through their unbridled violence.

^'295' It follows from all this that in the embodied, organic existence observation can only meet with reason in the sense of life in general, which, however, in its differentiating process involves really no rational sequence and organization, and is not an immanently grounded system of shapes and forms.

If in the logical process of the moments involved in organic embodiment the mediating term, which contains the species and its realization in the form of a single individuality, had within it the two extremes of inner universality and universal individuality, then this middle term would have, in the movement of its reality, the expression and the nature of universality, and would be self-systematizing development.

It is thus that consciousness takes as the middle term between universal spirit and its individuation or sense-consciousness, the system of shapes assumed by consciousness, as an orderly self-constituted whole of the life of spirit, the system of forms of conscious life which is dealt with in this treatise, and which finds its objective existential expression as the history of the world.

But organic nature has no history; it drops from its universal, — life, — immediately into the individuation of existence; and the moments of simple determinateness and individual living activity which are united in this realization, bring about the process of change merely as a contingent movement, wherein each plays its own part and the whole is preserved.

But the energy thus exerted is restricted, so far as itself is concerned, merely to its own fixed centre, because the whole is not present in it; and the whole is not there because the whole is not as such here for itself.

^'296' Besides the fact, then, that reason in observing organic nature only comes to see itself as universal life in general, it comes to see the development and realization of this life merely by way of systems distinguished quite generally, in the determination of which the essential reality lies not in the organic as such, but in the universal individual [the earth]; and among these distinctions of earth [it comes to see that development and realization] in the form of sequences which the genus attempts to establish.

^'297' Since, then, in its realization, the universality found in organic life lets itself drop directly into the extreme of individuation, without any true self-referring process of mediation, the thing before the observing mind is merely a would-be “meaning”; and if reason can take an idle interest to observe what is thus “meant” here, it is confined to describing and recording nature’s meanings” and incidental suggestions.

This irrational freedom of “fancying” doubtless will proffer on all sides beginnings of laws, traces of necessity, allusions to order and sequence, ingenious and specious relations of all kinds.

But in relating the organic to the different facts of the inorganic, elements, zones, climates, so far as regards law and necessary connexion, observation never gets further than the idea of a “great influence”.

So, too, on the other side, where individuality has not the significance of the earth, but of the oneness immanent in organic life, and where this, in immediate unity with the universal, no doubt constitutes the genus, whose simple unity however, is just for that reason determined merely as a number and hence lets go the qualitative appearance; — here observation cannot get further than to make clever remarks, bringing out interesting points in connexion, a friendly condescension to the notion.

But clever remarks do not amount to a knowledge of necessity; interesting points of connexion stop short at being simply of interest, while the interest is still nothing but fanciful “opinion” about the rational;

The friendliness of the individual in making allusion to a notion is a childlike friendliness, which is childish if, as it stands, it is to be or wants to be worth anything.