PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE

Philosophy of Nature
by Hegel
Table of Contents
Preliminary
§ 192 Nature has presented itself as the idea in the form of otherness.
§ 193 Hence nature exhibits no freedom in its existence, but only necessity and contingency.
§ 194 Nature is to be viewed as a system of stages, in which one stage necessarily arises from
the other.
§ 195 Nature is, in itself a living whole.
§ 196 The idea as nature can be named mathematics, physics, and physiology.
PART I: Mathematics
§ 197 The immediate determination of nature is the abstract generality of its
self-externality,-Space.
§ 198 The three dimensions are merely diverse and quite indeterminate.
§ 199 The relation of the point to space is the line, and the line passes over into the plane.
§ 200 Negativity, thus posited for itself is time.
§ 201 Time, as the negative unity of being outside of itself, is just as thoroughly abstract, ideal
being.
§ 202 The dimensions of time, the present, future, and past, are only that which is becoming and
its dissolution.
§ 203 Space and time constitute the idea in and for itself, with space the real or immediately
objective side and time the purely subjective side.
PART II: Inorganic Physics
§ 204 The unity of attraction and repulsion is gravity.
§ 205 Matter is only (1) matter existing in itself or general; (2) elementary matter, and (3)
Individualised matter.
A. Mechanics
§ 206 Matter, as simply general, has at first only a quantitative difference.
§ 208 The body is the indifferent content of space and time, in contrast to this form.
§ 208 As the unity which binds time & space, the body essentially has motion, and the
appearance of gravity.
§ 209 In motion, time posits itself spatially as place, but this indifferent spatiality becomes
temporal.
§ 210 Gravitation is the true and determinate concept of material corporeality.
§ 211 One body, therefore, is the general center of being in itself.; the particular bodies are
others.
§ 212 What Kepler articulated in the form of laws of celestial motion, Newton converted into the
nonconceptual, reflective form of the force of gravity.
§ 213 Lack their own centrality is striving towards the center lying outside of them.
§ 214 The Galilean law of falling the liberation of the conceptual determinations of time and
space.
§ 215 The law of inertia is taken from the nature of the motion of dependent bodies, for which
the motion is external.
§ 216 The difference between central and dependent bodies is in the implicit being of gravity.
§ 217 The determinacy of matter constitutes its being.
B. Elementary Physics
§ 218 The determination of an element is the being for itself of matter.
___(a) Elementary Particles
§ 219 This existing self of matter is light.
§ 220 As the abstract self of matter, light is absolutely lightweight, and as matter, infinite.
§ 221 The ineptitude, tastelessness, even dishonesty of Newton's observations and
experimentations.
§ 222 Light is the active identity which posits everything as identical.
§ 223 The lunar and the cometary body.
§ 224 The earth or the planet.
___(b) The Elements
§ 225 The body of individuality constitute general physical elements.
§ 226 Air is a transparent but just as elastic fluid, which absorbs and penetrates everything.
§ 227 Fire is materialised time.
§ 228 Water can assume a gaseous and a solid state apart from its characteristic state of internal
indeterminacy.
§ 229 Earth is the element of the developed difference.
___(c) The Elementary Process
§ 230 The meteorological process.
§ 231 The earth is continuously ignited by its primordial relationship to the sun.
§ 232 The thunderstorm.
§ 233 The elements present themselves as being unified together in concrete points of unity.
C. The Physics of Individuality
§ 234 The individual body is matter, brought together by the particularity of the elements.
___(a) Shape
§ 235 Shape is the specific inward coherence of matter and its external border in space.
§ 236 Density of matter, the relation of the weight of its mass to the volume.
§ 237 Brittleness.
§ 238 Magnetism.
§ 239 The sphere, the shape of the real absence of shape.
§ 240 Cohesion.
§ 241 Crystallisation.
§ 242 The body retains its individual determinacy in resistance to external force.
§ 243 Noise.
§ 244 Capacity for heat.
___(b) The Particularisation of Differences
§ 245 The ancient, general idea that each body consists of the four elements.
§ 246 Opacity, colour, odour saltiness, acidity, and taste.
§ 247 These bodies are isolated from each other, but as individuals they also stand in relation to
each other.
§ 248 Sound, electricity.
§ 249 Positive and negative electricity is an instance of how empiricism suspends itself.
§ 250 The chemical process.
___(c) The Process of Isolation
§ 251 The chemical process has its products as a presupposition.
§ 252 The decomposition of water into opposed moments.
§ 253 Oxidation.
§ 254 Nitrogen.
§ 255 Nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen and carbon,.
§ 256 Salt.
§ 257 Empirical chemistry orders the products according to superficial and abstract
determinations.
§ 258 The chemical process is, in general terms, life.
§ 259 The immediate chemical process; — the organism.
PART III: Organic Physics
§ 260 The individual body has attained selfhood and become subjective. ... the idea has entered
into existence, initially as an immediate existence, Life.
A. Geological Nature
§ 261 Presupposed by subjective totality itself the body of the earth is only the shape of the
organism.
§ 262 Forms manifest themselves as the unfolding of an underlying idea, a past one.
§ 263 Mountain ranges, and so on.
§ 264 The physical organisation of the earth shows a series of stages of granitic activity.
§ 265 General individuality now emerges for itself and life becomes vital or real.
B. Vegetable Nature
§ 266 The plant differentiates itself into distinct parts and falls into pieces as several individuals.
§ 267 Reproduction of the single individual coincides in this way with the process of genus
formation.
§ 268 Life is essentially the concept which realises itself only through self-division and
reunification.
§ 269 The plant is torn out of itself by light and multiplied into a multiplicity.
§ 270 The plant brings forth its light as its own self in the blossom.
§ 271 The plant in this way offers itself as a sacrifice.
§ 272 The plant suspends the immediate individuality, and grounds the transition into the higher
organism.
C. Animal Organism
§ 273 In its outward process the organism inwardly preserves the unity of the self.
§ 274 The animal has contingent self-movement because its subjectivity is ideality torn from
gravity.
§ 275 It is only as a selfreproducing entity, not as an existing one, that the animal organism is
living.
§ 276 Sensibility; irritability and reproduction..
§ 277 The animal divides itself into three systems, the head, thorax, and the abdomen.
§ 278 The idea of the living organism is the manifested unity of the concept with its reality.
§ 279 The simple feeling of self.
§ 280 Animal organisation differentiates itself into the multiple sensory qualities of inorganic
nature.
§ 281 The senses.
§ 282 Only what is living feels a lack.
§ 283 The animal is an individual entity, and therefore turns back constantly from its satisfaction
to need.
§ 284 The seizure of the external object is the beginning of the unification of the object with the
living animal.
§ 285 The opposition of the subject to its immediate assimilation.
§ 286 Digestion.
§ 287 The end product of its activity are that which it already is originally and at the beginning.
§ 288 Sexual difference.
§ 289 Sex drive.
§ 290 The inadequacy of its single actuality drives each to have its self-feeling only in the other of
its genus.
§ 291 The product is only implicitly this genus and distinct from the individuals which have
perished in it.
§ 292 Comparative anatomy seeks to arrange its material to accord with reason.
§ 293 The individual organism can not accord with its determination.
§ 294 Disease, fever and healing.
§ 295 Medicine provokes the organism to remove the inorganic power with which it is
entangled.
§ 296 The animal's subjectivity is only the concept in itself but not itself for itself .
§ 297 In death the individual achieves only an abstract objectivity.
§ 298 Nature passes over into its truth, the subjectivity of the concept, whose objectivity is itself
the suspended immediacy of individuality, the concrete generality, the concept which has the
concept as its existence — into the Spirit.
Preliminary Concepts
§ 192.
Nature has presented itself as the idea in the form of otherness.
Since in nature the idea is as the negative of itself or is external to itself nature is not merely
external in relation to this idea, but the externality constitutes the determination in which nature as
nature exists.
§ 193.
In this externality the determinations of the concept have the appearance of an indifferent
subsistence and isolation in regards to each other. The concept therefore exists as an inward
entity. Hence nature exhibits no freedom in its existence, but only necessity and contingency.
For this reason nature, in the determinate existence, which makes it nature, is not to be deified, nor
are the sun, moon, animals, plants, and so on, to be regarded and adduced as the works of God,
more excellent than human actions and events. Nature in itself in the idea, is divine, but in the
specific mode by which it is nature it is suspended. As it is, the being of nature does not
correspond to its concept; its existing actuality therefore has no truth; its abstract essence is the
negative, as the ancients conceived of matter in general as the non-ens. But because, even in this
element, nature is a representation of the idea, one may very well admire in it the wisdom of God.
If however, as Vanini said, a stalk of straw suffices to demonstrate God's being, then every
representation of the spirit, the slightest fancy of the mind, the play of its most capricious whim,
every word, offers a ground for the knowledge of God's being that is superior to any single object
of nature. In nature, not only is the play of forms unbound and unchecked in contingency, but each
figure for itself lacks the concept of itself. The highest level to which nature drives its existence is
life, but as only a natural idea this is at the mercy of the unreason of externality, and individual
vitality is in each moment of its existence entangled with an individuality which is other to it,
whereas in every expression of the spirit is contained the moment of free, universal self-relation. -
Nature in general is justly determined as the decline of the idea from itself because in the element
of externality it has the determination of the inappropriateness of itself with itself.-A similar
misunderstanding is to regard human works of art as inferior to natural things, on the grounds that
works of art must take their material from outside, and that they are not alive.-It is as if the spiritual
form did not contain a higher level of life, and were not more worthy of the spirit than the natural
form, and as if in all ethical things what can be called matter did not belong solely to the spirit -
Nature remains, despite all the contingency of its existence, obedient to eternal laws; but surely this
is also true of the realm of selfconsciousness, a fact which can already be seen in the belief that
providence governs human affairs. Or are the determinations of this providence in the field of
human affairs only contingent and irrational? But if the contingency of spirit, the free will, leads to
evil, is this not still infinitely higher than the regular behaviour of the stars, or the innocence of the
plants?
§ 194.
Nature is to be viewed as a system of stages, in which one stage necessarily arises from the other
and is the truth closest to the other from which it results, though not in such a way that the one
would naturally generate the other, but rather in the inner idea which constitutes the ground of
nature.
It has been an awkward conception in older and also more recent philosophy of nature to see the
progression and the transition of one natural form and sphere into another as an external, actual
production which, however, in order to be made clearer, is relegated to the darkness of the past.
Precisely this externality is characteristic of nature: differences are allowed to fall apart and to
appear as existences indifferent to each other; and the dialectical concept, which leads the stages
further, is the interior which emerges only in the
spirit. Certainly the previously favoured teleological view provided the basis for the relation to the
concept, and, in the same way, the relation to the spirit, but it focused only on external
purposiveness-(cf § 151) and viewed the spirit as if it were entangled in finite and natural
purposes. Due to the vapidity of such finite purposes, purposes for which natural things were
shown to be useful, the teleological view has been discredited for exhibiting the wisdom of God.
The view of the usefulness of natural things has the implicit truth that these things are not in and for
themselves an absolute goal; nevertheless, it is unable to determine whether such things are
defective or inadequate. For this determination it is necessary to posit that the immanent moment
of its idea, which brings about its transiency and transition into another existence, produces at the
same time a transformation into a higher concept.
§ 195.
Nature is, in itself a living whole. The movement of its idea through its sequence of stages is more
precisely this: the idea posits itself as that which it is in itself; or, what is the same thing, it goes into
itself out of that immediacy and externality which is death in order to go into itself; yet further, it
suspends this determinacy of the idea, in which it is only life, and becomes spirit, which is its truth.
§ 196.
The idea as nature is: (1) as universal, ideal being outside of itself space and time; (2) as real and
mutual being apart from itself particular or material existence, - inorganic nature; (3) as living
actuality, organic nature. The three sciences can thus be named mathematics, physics, and
physiology.
I
Mathematics
§ 197.
(1) The first or immediate determination of nature is the abstract generality of its
self-externality,-its unmediated indifference, space. It is the wholly ideal juxtaposition, because it is
being outside of itself and absolutely continuous, because this being apart from itself is still entirely
abstract, and has no specific difference within itself.
Much has been said, from different theoretical positions, about the nature of space. I will mention
only the Kantian determination that space is, like time, a form of sensory intuition. It has also
become customary to establish fundamentally that space must be regarded only as something
subjective in representation. Disregarding what, in the Kantian conception, belongs to subjective
idealism and its determinations (cf § 5), the correct determination remains that space is a mere
form, i.e., an abstraction, that of immediate externality.-To speak of points of space, as if they
constituted the positive element of space, is inadmissible, since space, on account of its lack of
differentiation, is only the possibility and not the positing of that which is negative and therefore
absolutely continuous. The point is therefore rather the negation of space.-This also settles the
question of the infinitude of space. Space is in general pure quantity (§ 53f), though no longer as a
logical determination, but rather as existing immediately and externally. Nature, consequently, does
not begin with quality but with quantity, because its determination is not, like logical being, the
absolute first and immediate, but essentially a mediated being, a being external to and other than
itself
§ 198.
Space has, as the concept in general (and more determinate than an indifferent self-externality) its
differences within it: (a) in its indifference these are immediately the three dimensions, which are
merely diverse and quite indeterminate.
But geometry is not required to deduce that space necessarily has precisely three dimensions, for it
is not a philosophical science, and may therefore presuppose space as its object. Moreover, even
apart from this, no thought is given to the demonstration of such a necessity. The necessity rests on
the nature of the concept, whose determinations, however, because they depict themselves in
these first elements of being apart from themselves, in abstract quantity, are only entirely superficial
and a completely empty difference. One can also, therefore, not say how height, length, and width
differ from each other, because they only ought to be different, but are not yet differences.-Height
has its more precise determination as direction according to the center of the earth, but this does
not at all concern the nature of space for itself Following from this point it is equally as indifferent
whether this direction is called height or depth, or length or breadth, which is also often called
depth.
§ 199.
(b) But the difference of space is essentially a determinate, qualitative difference. As such it is (a)
first, the negation of space itself because this is immediate and undifferentiated self-externality, the
point. (b) The negation as negation, however, is itself spatial, and the relation of the point to space
is the line, the first otherness of the point. (c) The truth of the otherness is, however, the negation
of the negation. The line, therefore, passes over into the plane, which on the one hand is a
determinacy opposed to line and point, and thus is plane in general, but on the other hand is the
suspended negation of space, and thus the re-establishment of spatial totality, which, however,
now contains the negative moment within itself an enclosing surface, which splits off an individual,
whole space.
That the line does not consist of points, nor the plane of lines, follows from their concepts, for the
line is the point existing outside of itself relating itself to space, and suspending itself and the plane
is just as much the suspended line existing outside of itself.-Here the point is represented as the
first and positive entity, and taken as the starting point. The converse, though, is also true: in as far
as space is positive, the plane is the first negation and the line is the second, which, however, is in
its truth the negation relating self to self the point. The necessity of the transition is the same.-
The other configurations of space considered by geometry are further qualitative limitations of a
spatial abstraction, of the plane, or of a limited spatial whole. Here there occur a few necessary
moments, for example, that the triangle is the first rectilinear figure, that all other figures must, to be
determined, be reduced to it or to the square, and so on.-The principle of these figures is the
identity of the understanding, which determines the figurations as regular, and in this way grounds
the relationships and sets them in place, which it now becomes the purpose of science to know.
It may be noted in passing that it was an extraordinary notion of Kant's to claim that the definition
of the straight line as the shortest distance between two points is a synthetic proposition, for my
concept of straightness contains nothing of size, but only a quality. In this sense every definition is a
synthetic proposition. What is defined, the straight line, is in the first place the intuition or
representation, and the determination that it is the shortest distance between two points constitutes
in the first place the concept (namely, as it appears in such definitions, cf. § 110). That the
concept is not already given by the intuition constitutes precisely the difference between the two,
and is what calls for a definition. That something seems to the representation to be a quality,
though its specificity rests on a quantitative determination, is something very simple, and also the
case for example with the right angle, the straight line, and so on.
§ 200.
(2) Negativity, which as point relates itself to space and in space develops its determinations as
line and plane, is, however, in the sphere of self-externality equally for itself and appearing
indifferent to the motionless coexistence of space. Negativity, thus posited for itself is time.
§ 201.
Time, as the negative unity of being outside of itself, is just as thoroughly abstract, ideal being:
being which, since it is, is not, and since it is not, is.
Tune, like space, is a pure form of sensuousness, or intuition; but, as with space, the difference
between objectivity and a contrastingly subjective consciousness does not matter to time. If these
determinations are applied to space and time, then space is abstract objectivity, whereas time is
abstract subjectivity. Time is the same principle as the I = I of pure self-consciousness; but the
same principle or the simple concept still in its entire externality, intuited mere becoming, pure
being in itself as sheer coming out of itself. Time is just as continuous as space, for it is abstract
negativity relating itself to itself and in this abstraction there is as yet no real difference.
In time, it is said, everything arises and passes away, or rather, there appears precisely the
abstraction of arising and falling away. If abstractions are made from everything, namely, from the
fullness of time just as much as from the fullness of space, then there remains both empty time and
empty space left over; that is, there are then posited these abstractions of exteriority.-But time
itself is this becoming, this existing abstraction, the Chronos who gives birth to everything and
destroys his offspring.-That which is real, however, is just as identical to as distinct from time.
Everything is transitory that is temporal, that is, exists only in time or, like the concept, is not in
itself pure negativity. To be sure, this negativity is in everything as its immanent, universal essence,
but the temporal is not adequate to this essence, and therefore relates to this negativity in terms of
its power. Time itself is eternal, for it is neither just any time, nor the moment now, but time as time
is its concept. The concept, however, in its identity with itself I= 1, is in and for itself absolute
negativity and freedom. Time, is not, therefore, the power of the concept, nor is the concept in
time and temporal; on the contrary, the concept is the power of time, which is only this negativity
as externality.-The natural is therefore subordinate to time, insofar as it is finite; that which is true,
by contrast, the idea, the spirit, is eternal. Thus the concept of eternity must not be grasped as if it
were suspended time, or in any case not in the sense that eternity would come after time, for this
would turn eternity into the future, in other words into a moment of time. And the concept of
eternity must also not be understood in the sense of a negation of time, so that it would be merely
an abstraction of time. For time in its concept is, like the concept itself generally, eternal, and
therefore also absolute presence.
§ 202.
The dimensions of time, the present, future, and past, are only that which is becoming and its
dissolution into the differences of being as the transition into nothingness, and of Nothingness as
the transition into being. The immediate disappearance of these differences into individuality is the
present as now, which is itself only this disappearance of being into nothingness, and of
nothingness into being.
(1) The finite present is differentiated from the infinite in that the finite is the moment now and
hence as its abstract moments, as past and future, which is different from the infinite as from the
concrete unity. Eternity as concept, h r, contains these moments in itself and its concrete unity is
therefore not the moment now, because it is motionless identity, concrete being as universal, and
not that which is disappearing into nothingness, as becoming.-Furthermore in nature, where time is
now, there does not occur the subsisting difference of these dimensions; they are necessarily only
in subjective representation, in memory, fear, or hope. The abstract past, however, and future of
time is space, as the suspended space is at first the point and time.
(2) There is no science of time in opposition to the finite science of space, geometry, because the
differences of time do not have the indifference of being outside of itself which constitutes the
immediate determinacy of space, and therefore they can not be expressed as spatial
configurations. The principle of time only reaches this ability when the understanding has paralysed
it and reduced its negativity to the unit. This motionless unit, as the sheer carnality of thought, can
be used to form external combinations, and these, the numbers of arithmetic, can themselves be
brought under the categories of the truth as intuition or as understanding merely for itself because
the latter is only abstract, whereas the former is concrete. This dead unit, now the highest
externality of thought, can be used to form external combinations, and these combinations, the
figures of arithmetic, can in turn be organised by the determination of the understanding in terms of
equality and inequality, identity and difference. The science which has unity as its principle is
therefore constituted in opposition to geometry.
(3) The name of mathematics has moreover been used for the philosophical observation of space
and time, because it lies close to this observation, despite the fact that mathematics, as noted,
considers strictly the determinations of magnitude of its objects and not time itself but only the unit
in its configurations and connections. To be sure, time becomes in the theory of movement an
object of science, but applied mathematics is generally not an immanent science, precisely because
it involves the application of pure mathematics to a given material and its determinations as derived
from experience.
(4) One could still, however, conceive the thought of a philosophical mathematics, namely, as a
science which would recognise those concepts which constitute what the conventional
mathematical science of the understanding derives from its presupposed determinations, and
according to the method of the understanding, without concepts. However, since mathematics is
the science of the finite determinations of magnitude, which remain fixed in their finitude and valid,
and should not change in transit, thus it is essentially a science of the understanding. And since it
has the ability to express spatial figures and numbers, which gives it an advantage over other
sciences of this kind, it ought to retain this ability for itself and to avoid contamination by either
concepts, like time, which are heterogeneous to it, or empirical purposes. It therefore remains
open for the concept to establish a more fundamental consciousness than has hitherto been shown,
both in terms of the leading principles of the understanding and in terms of order and its necessity
in arithmetical operations, as well as in the theses of geometry.-If one wanted to treat the forms of
space and the unit philosophically, they would lose on these grounds their particular significance, a
philosophy of them would become a matter of logic, or would even assume the character of
another concrete philosophical science, according to the ways one imparted a more concrete
significance to the concepts.-
It would, however, be a superfluous and thankless task to try to use such an unmanageable and
inadequate medium as spatial figures and numbers for the expression of thoughts, and to treat them
violently for this purpose. For the specific concept would always be related only externally to
them. The simple elementary figures and numbers can in any case be used as symbols, which,
however, are a subordinate and poor expression for thoughts. The first attempts of pure thought
took recourse to such aids: the Pythagorean system of numbers is the famous example of this. But
with richer concepts these means became completely unsatisfactory, since their external
juxtaposition and contingent combination are not at all appropriate to the nature of the concept,
and make it altogether ambiguous which of the many possible relationships in complex numbers
and figures should be adhered to. Besides, the fluid character of the concept is dissipated in such
an external medium, in which each determination falls into the indifferent being outside the others.
This ambiguity could only be removed by an explanation. The essential expression of the thought is
in that case this explanation, and this symbolising is an empty superfluity.
Other mathematical determinations, such as infinity and its relationships, the infinitesimal, factors,
powers, and so ' on, have their true concepts in philosophy itself. It is awkward to want to take
and derive these from mathematics, where they are employed in a nonconceptual, often
meaningless way; rather, they must await their justification and significance from philosophy. The
truly philosophical science of mathematics as theory of magnitude would be the science of
measures, but this already presupposes the real particularity of things, which is only at hand in
concrete nature.
§ 203.
(5) Space and time constitute the idea in and for itself, with space the real or immediately
objective side and time the purely subjective side. Space is in itself the contradiction of indifferent
being outside of others and undifferentiated continuity, and thereby the pure negativity of itself and
the transition into time. Space converts into the individuality of the place. Time is, equally, since its
moments held together in unity suspend themselves immediately, the immediate convergence into
indifference, into undifferentiated being apart from one another, or into space, so that its place is
precisely in that way immediate as sheer indifferent spatiality. This disappearance and regeneration
of space in time and of time in space is motion;-a becoming, which, however, is itself just as much
immediately the identically existing unity of both, or matter.
The transition from ideality to reality, from abstraction to concrete existence, in this case from
space and time to reality, which appears as matter, is incomprehensible to the understanding, and
always converts therefore externally for the understanding, and as a given entity. The usual
conception is to take space and time as empty and to be filled with matter from the outside. In this
way material things are, on the one hand, to be taken as indifferent to space and time, and on the
other hand to be taken at the same time as essentially spatial and temporal.
What is usually said of matter is: (a) that it is composite; this refers to its identity with space.
Insofar as abstractions are made from time and from all form generally, it is asserted that matter is
eternal and immutable. In fact, this follows immediately, but such a matter is also only an untrue
abstraction. (b) It is said that matter is impenetrable and offers resistance, is tangible, visible, and
so on. These predicates mean nothing else than that matter exists, partly for specific forms of
perception, in general for an other, but partly just as much for itself Both of these are
determinations which belong to matter precisely because it is the identity of space and time, of
immediate being apart from itself or of becoming.
The transition of ideality into reality is demonstrated therefore in the familiar mechanical
phenomena, namely, that ideality can take the place of reality and vice versa; and only the usual
thoughtlessness of the representation and of the understanding are to blame that, for them, their
identity does not derive from the interchangeability of both. In connection with the lever, for
example, distance can be posited in the place of mass and vice versa, and a quantum of the ideal
moment produces the same effect as the corresponding real moment.
Similarly, velocity, in the magnitude of motion, the quantitative relationship of space and time,
represents mass, and conversely, the same real effect emerges if the mass is increased and the
velocity proportionately decreased. By itself a brick does not kill a person, but produces this
effect only though the velocity it achieves, in other words, the person is killed through space and
time.
It is force, a category of reflection fixed by the understanding, which presents itself here as the
ultimate, and therefore prevents understanding and lets it seem superfluous to inquire further after
the concept. But this at least appears without thought, namely, that the effect of force is something
real and appealing to the senses, and in force there is realised that which is in its expression;
indeed, it appears that force achieves precisely this force of its expression through the relationship
of its ideal moments, of space and time.
Further, it is also in keeping with this nonconceptual reflection that "forces' are seen as implanted in
matter, and as originally external to it, so that this very identity of time-and space, which vaguely
appears in the reflective category of force, and which in truth constitutes the essence of matter, is
posited as something alien to it and contingent, something introduced into it from outside.
II
Inorganic Physics
A. Mechanics - B. Elementary Physics - C. The Physics of Individuality
§ 204.
Matter in itself holds itself apart from itself through the moment of its negativity, diversity, or
abstract separation into parts; it has repulsion. Its being apart from itself is just as essential,
however, because these differences are one and the same: the negative unity of this existence apart
from itself as being for itself, and thus continuous. Matter therefore has attraction. The unity of
these moments is gravity.
Kant has, among other things, through the attempt at a “construction” of matter in his
metaphysical elements of the natural sciences, the merit of having started towards a concept of
matter, after it had been attributed merely to the deadness of the understanding and its
determinations had been conceived as the relations of attributes. With this attempt Kant revived
the concept of the philosophy of nature, which is nothing other than the comprehension of nature
or, what is the same, the knowledge of the concept in nature. But in so doing he assumed that the
reflective categories of attraction and repulsion were readymade, and further, he presupposed that
the category of the reflection itself out of which matter should emerge, is readymade. This
confusion is a necessary consequence of Kant's procedure, because the former abstract moments
can not be conceptualised without their identity; moreover, because the observation of these
opposing determinations suspends itself immediately in their identity, there is the danger that they
will appear, like attraction, as a mere continuity. I have demonstrated in detail the confusion which
dominates Kant's exposition in my system of Logic, vol. 1, part 1, pp. 119ff.
§ 205.
Matter, as having gravity, is only: (1) matter existing in itself or general. But this concept must: (2)
specify itself; thus it is elementary matter, and the object of elementary physics. (3) Particular
matter taken together is individualised matter, and the object of physics as the actual world of the
body.
A.
Mechanics
§ 206.
Matter, as simply general, has at first only a quantitative difference, and particularises itself into
different quanta, - masses, which, in the superficial determination of a whole or one, are bodies.
§ 207.
The body is: (1) as heavy matter the solid identity of space and time, but (2) as the first negation it
has in itself their ideality, which differentiates them from each other and from the body. The body is
essentially in space and time, of which it constitutes its indifferent content in contrast to this form.
§ 208.
(3) As space, in which time is suspended, the body is enduring, and (4) as time, in which the
indifferent subsistence of space is suspended, the body is transitory. In general, it is a wholly
contingent unit. (5) But as the unity which binds together the two moments in their opposition, the
body essentially has motion, and the appearance of gravity.
Because the forces have been seen as only implanted onto matter, motion in particular is
considered to be a determination external to the body, even by that physics which is presumably
scientific. It has thus become a leading axiom of mechanics that the body is set in motion or placed
into a condition only by an external cause. On the one hand it is the understanding which holds
motion and rest apart as nonconceptual determinations, and therefore does not grasp their
transition into each other, but on the other hand only the selfless bodies of the earth,. which are the
object of ordinary mechanics, appear in this representation. The determinations, which occur in the
appearance of such bodies and are valid, are set as the foundation, and the nature of the
independent bodies is subsumed under this category. In fact, however, the latter are truly more
general and the former is that which is subsumed absolutely, and in absolute mechanics the
concept presents itself in its truth and singularity.
§ 209.
In motion, time posits itself spatially as place, but this indifferent spatiality becomes just as
immediately temporal: the place becomes another (cf § 202). This difference of time and space is,
as the difference of their absolute unity and their indifferent content, a difference of bodies, which
hold themselves apart from each other yet equally seek their unity through gravity; — general
gravitation.
§ 210.
Gravitation is the true and determinate concept of material corporeality, which is thereby just as
essentially divided into particular bodies, and which has its manifested existence, the moment of
external individuality, in movement, which is thus determined immediately as a relation of several
bodies.
General gravitation must be recognised for itself as a profound thought, which constitutes an
absolute basis for mechanics if it is conceived initially in the sphere of reflection, though it is so
bound up with it through the quantitative determinations that it has attracted attention and credit,
and its verification has been based solely on the experience analysed from the solar system down
to the phenomenon of the capillary tubes. Certainly gravitation directly contradicts the law of
inertia, for, by virtue of the former, matter strives to get out of itself to another. In the concept of
gravity, as has been shown, there are included the two moments of being for itself and of that
continuity that suspends being for itself These moments of the concept now experience the fate, as
particular forces corresponding to the power of attraction and repulsion, of being conceived more
precisely as the centripetal and the centrifugal forces, which are supposed, like gravity, to act on
bodies, and independently of each other and contingently, to meet together in a third entity, the
body. In this way whatever profundity was contained in the thought of general gravitation is
destroyed again, and the concept and reason will be unable to penetrate into the theory of
absolute motion, as long as the vaunted discoveries of forces prevail there.
if one closely considers the quantitative determinations which have been identified in the laws of
the centripetal and the centrifugal forces, one very quickly discovers the confusion which emerges
from their separation. This confusion becomes even greater if the separation is mentioned in
relation to gravitation; gravitation, also called attraction, then seems to be the same as centripetal
force, the law of this individual force is taken as the law of the whole of gravitation, and the
centrifugal force, which at another time is valued as thoroughly essential, is viewed as something
quite superfluous.-In the above proposition, which contains the immediate idea of gravitation,
gravity itself namely, as the concept, which shows itself in the particularity of the body through the
external reality of motion, the rational identity and inseparability of these two moments are
contained.-The relativity of motion also shows itself in this proposition, which only makes sense in
a system of several bodies standing in relation to each other in accordance with a varied
determination, so that a different determination will immediately result.
§ 211.
The particular bodies in which gravity is realised have, as the determinations of their different
natures, the moments of their concept. One body, therefore, is the general centre of being in itself.
Opposing this extreme stands individuality, existing outside of itself and without a centre. But the
particular bodies are others, which stand in the determination of being outside of themselves and
are at the same time, as being in themselves, also centres for themselves, and are related to the
first body as to their essential unity.
§ 212.
(1) The motion of bodies of relative centrality, in relation to bodies of abstract, general centrality,
is absolutely free motion, and the conclusion of this system is that the general central body is
brought together through relative centrality with dependent corporeality.
As is well-known, the laws of absolutely free motion were discovered by Kepler, a discovery of
immortal fame. Kepler proved them, too, in the sense that he found the general expression for the
empirical data (cf § 145). Since then it has become a commonplace that Newton first found the
proofs of these laws. Not often has fame been more unjustly transferred from the first discoverer
to another. Here I only want to point out what has basically already been admitted by
mathematicians, namely: (1) that the Newtonian formulas can be derived from Keplerian laws; (2)
that the Newtonian proof of the proposition that a body governed by the law of gravitation moves
in an ellipse around the central body proceeds in general in a conic section, whereas the main point
that was to be proven consists precisely in this, that the course of such a body is neither a circle
nor any other conic section, but solely the ellipse. The conditions which make the course of the
body into a specific conic section are referred back to an empirical condition, namely, a particular
situation of the body at a specific point in time, and to the contingent strength of an impulse which
it is supposed to have received at the beginning. (3) Newton's 'law" of the force of gravity has
likewise only been demonstrated inductively from experience.
On closer inspection it appears that what Kepler, in a simple and sublime manner, articulated in
the form of laws of celestial motion, Newton converted into the nonconceptual, reflective form of
the force of gravity. The whole manner of this "proof" presents in general a confused tissue of lines
of merely geometrical construction to which a physical meaning of independent forces is given, of
the empty concepts of the understanding of a force of acceleration, of particles of time, at whose
beginning those forces always play a renewed role, and of a force of inertia, which presumably
continues its previous effect, and so on. A rational proof of the quantitative determinations of free
motion can only rest on the determinations of the concepts of space and time, the moments whose
relation is motion.
§ 213.
(2) The absolute relation of those dependent bodies, which are merely the extreme of the being
outside of itself of gravity and therefore lack their own centrality to their relative central bodies, is
the residual element of their gravity in them, which because of physical being outside of themselves
is mere striving and, therefore, a pressure directed towards the centre lying outside of them.
§ 214.
The separation of the immediate connection in which such a body rests is a contingent condition,
which the body, if confronted with an external impediment, suspends as motion, - relatively free
motion in which the distancing from the body is not attributed as dependent, but the motion, if the
impediment is removed, is immanent to the body and a manifestation of its own gravity. This
motion transforms itself for itself into rest.
The attractive force of the sun, for example towards the planets, or of the earth towards those
independent bodies belonging to it, seems to suggest the skewed view that the force would be an
activity inhabiting the central body, and that the bodies found in its sphere would behave only
passively and externally. Thus absolute motion is also viewed, through the application of terms
from common mechanics, as the dead conflict of an independent, tangential force and of a force
deriving equally independently from the middle point, from which the body would be passively
drawn.
The Galilean law of falling, namely, that traversed spaces behave as the squares of transpired
times, shows, in contrast to the abstract, homogeneous velocity of the lifeless mechanism, where
spaces are proportional to times, the liberation of the conceptual determinations of time and space.
In these terms the former has the determination of the root as the negative moment or principle of
one, whereas the latter has the determination of the square as a being outside of itself more
specifically, without another determinacy like that of the root, a coming outside of itself. In this law
both moments still remain in the relation, because the freedom of motion in falling, which is also
conditioned, is only formal. By contrast, in absolute motion there is the relation in its totality, since
this is the realm of free measures in which each determinacy attains its totality. Because the law is
essentially relational, time and space are retained in their original difference. Dimensionless time
achieves therefore only a formal identity with itself; space, on the other hand, as positive being
outside of itself achieves the dimension of the concept. The Keplerian law is thus the relation of the
cubes of the distances to the squares of the times;-a law which is so great because it simply and
directly depicts the reason of the thing. The Newtonian formula, however, which transforms it into
a law for the force of gravity, exhibits only the perversion and inversion of reflection which has
stopped halfway.
§ 215.
(3) In the extremity of dependent bodies, general gravitation, which bodies have as matter toward
each other, is subordinated to the gravitation which they have towards their shared central bodies.
Towards each other, then, their motion is external and contingent; the cause of the motion is thrust
and pressure. In this common mechanical motion the size of the mass, which has no meaning in the
fall, and the resistance, which the size achieves through its particular constitution, are moments of
determination. But because this motion contradicts the essential relation of the dependent body,
namely, that relation to its central body, it suspends itself through itself in rest. This necessity of the
concept appears, however, in the sphere of externality, as an external impediment or friction.
The law of inertia is initially taken from the nature of the motion of dependent bodies, for which the
motion, because it involves the difference from themselves for themselves, is external. But
precisely for this reason rest is immanent to the bodies, namely, the identity with the centre lying
outside of them. Their motion converts therefore essentially into rest, but not into absolute rest,
rather into the pressure of striving towards their centre. This centre, if it is to be seen as a striving
moment, is at the least the transformation of that external movement into the striving which
constitutes the nature of the body.
The individual impediment, or the general one, the friction, is external, to be sure, but also
necessary. It is the manifestation of that transition posited by the concept of the dependent body.
And precisely this can also be found in consideration of the pendulum, the motion of which, it is
said, would continue without stopping if friction could be removed.
For itself the law of inertia expresses nothing but the fixation of the understanding on the
abstractions of rest and motion, which state that rest is only rest and motion is only motion. The
transformation of these abstractions into each other, which is the concept, is for the understanding
something external. This law of inertia, together with thrust, attraction, and other determinations
have been inadmissibly transposed from common mechanics into absolute mechanics, where
motion is rather to be found in its free concept.
§ 216.
The difference between central and dependent bodies is in the implicit being of gravity, whose
identical nature is its existence. The dependent body has the beginning of the real difference as the
being outside of itself of the gravity identical to itself; the dependent body has only a negative
centre and therefore can only move around the centre simply as mass. The determinacy of its
motion is not in and for itself but refers back to a factor which is the mass of the other, so that their
sizes can be exchanged, and the motion remains the same.
§ 217.
This externality of determinate being constitutes the special determinacy of matter. But in this it
does not remain limited by a quantitative difference, rather the difference is essentially a qualitative
one, so that the determinacy of matter constitutes its being.
The empty abstraction of formless matter contains a merely quantitative difference and views its
further determinacy as a form inessential to it. Even the forces of attraction and repulsion are
supposed to influence it externally. Since it is the concept positing itself outside of itself it is so
identical to the specific form that the form constitutes its special nature.
B.
Elementary Physics
§ 218.
Gravity, as the essence of matter existing in itself only inner identity, transforms, since its concept is
the essential externality, into the manifestation of the essence. As such it is the totality of the
determinations of reflection, but these as thrown apart from each other, so that each appears as
particular, qualified matter which, not yet determined as individuality, is a formless element.
The determination of an element is the being for itself of matter as it finds its point of unity in the
concept, though this does not yet have to do with the determination of a physical element, which is
still real matter, a totality of its qualities existing in itself.
(a) Elementary Particles
§ 219.
(1) Matter in its first elementary state is pure identity, not inwardly, but as existing, that is, the
relation to itself determined as independent in contrast to the other determinations of totality. This
existing self of matter is light.
§ 220.
As the abstract self of matter, light is absolutely lightweight, and as matter, infinite, but as material
ideality it is inseparable and simple being outside of itself.
In the Oriental intuition of the substantial unity of the spiritual and the natural, the pure selfhood of
consciousness, thought identical with itself as the abstraction of the true and the good is one with
light. When the conception which has been called realistic denies that ideality is present in nature, it
need only be referred to light, to that pure manifestation which is nothing but manifestation.
Heavy matter is divisible into masses, since it is concrete identity and quantity; but in the highly
abstract ideality of light there is no such distinction; a limitation of light in its infinite expansion does
not suspend its absolute connection. The conception of discrete, simple, rays of light, and of
particles and bundles of them which are supposed to constitute light in its limited expansion,
belongs among the rest of the conceptual barbarism which has, particularly since Newton, become
dominant in physics. The indivisibility of light in its infinite expansion, a reality outside of itself that
remains self-identical, can least of all be treated as incomprehensible by the understanding, for its
own principle is rather this abstract identity.
Astronomers have come to speak of celestial phenomena which are perceived by us five hundred
years and more after their actual occurrence. In this one can see, on the one hand, empirical
manifestations of the propagation of light, carried over from a sphere where they obtain into
another where they have no meaning, but on the other hand a past which has become present in
ideal fashion as in memory.
There is also the conception of light which suggests that from each point of a visible surface beams
are emitted in every direction, so that from each point a material hemisphere of infinite dimensions
is formed, and that all of these infinitely many hemispheres interpenetrate each other. If this were
so a dense, confused mass should form between the eye and the object, and the still-unexplained
visibility would rather, on the basis of this explanation, give way to invisibility. The whole
conception reduces to an absurdity, somewhat like the conception of a concrete body which is
presumed to consist of many substances, with each existing in the pores of the other, in which,
conversely, the others exist and circulate. Through this comprehensive penetration the assumption
of the discrete materiality of the supposedly real substances is destroyed, and an entirely ideal
relationship is established.
The self-like nature of light, insofar as it vitalises natural things, individualises them, and strengthens
and holds together their unfolding, first becomes manifest in the individualisation of matter, for the
initially abstract identity is only as return and suspension of particularity the negative unity of
individuality.
§ 221.
Light behaves as a general identity, initially in this determination of diversity, or the determination
by the understanding of the moment of totality, then to concrete matter as an external and other
entity, as to darkening. This contact and external darkening of the one by the other is colour.
According to the familiar Newtonian theory, white, or colourless light consists of five or seven
colours; - the theory itself can not say exactly how many. One can not express oneself strongly
enough about the barbarism, in the first place, of the conception that with light, too, the worst form
of reflection, the compound, was seized upon, so that brightness here could consist of seven
darknesses, or water could consist of seven forms of earth. Further, the ineptitude, tastelessness,
even dishonesty of Newton's observations and experimentations must be addressed, as well as the
equally bad tendency to draw inferences, conclusions, and proofs from impure empirical data.
Moreover, the blindness of the admiration given to Newton's work for nearly one and a half
centuries must be noted, the narrowmindedness of those admirers who defend his conceptions,
and, in particular, the thoughtlessness with which a number of the immediate conclusions of that
theory (for example, the impossibility of an achromatic telescope) were dropped, although the
theory itself is still maintained. Finally, there is the blindness of the prejudice that the theory rests
on something mathematical, as if the partly false and one-sided measurements, as well as the
quantitative determinations brought into the conclusions, would provide any basis for the theory
and the nature of the thing itself.-A major reason why the clear, thorough, and learned illumination
by Goethe of this darkness concerning light has not had a more effective reception is doubtlessly
because the thoughtlessness and simplemindedness, which one would have to confess for
following Newton for so long, would be entirely too great.
Instead of these nonsensical conceptions disappearing, they have recently been compounded by
the discoveries of Malus, by the idea of a polarisation of light, the notion of the four-sidedness of
sunbeams, and the idea that red beams rotate in a movement to the left, whereas blue beams
rotate in a movement to the right. Such simplistic ideas seem justified by the privilege accorded to
physics to generate "hypotheses." But even as a joke one does not indulge in stupidities; thus so
much the less should stupidities be offered as hypotheses which are not even meant to be jokes.
§ 222.
Light shapes the determinate being or the physical meaning of the body of abstract centrality in the
determination of its identity. Light is the active identity which posits everything as identical. As this
identity, however, is still wholly abstract, things are not yet really identical, but are for an other,
positing their identity with the other in the other.
§ 223.
This abstract identity has its real antithesis outside of itself. As an elementary moment of reflection
it falls apart into itself and is as a duality: (a) of corporeal diversity, of material being for itself of
rigidity; (b) of opposition as such, which, existing independently and uncontrolled by individuality,
has merely sunken within itself and is thus dissolution and neutrality. The former is the lunar, the
latter is the cometary body.
As relative central bodies in the system of gravity these two bodies have their more specific
significance, which is based on the same concept as their physical significance and may be stated
here: they do not rotate on their axes. The body of rigidity has only a formal being for itself which
is independence comprehended in antithesis and therefore not individuality. Hence it is subservient
to another body whose satellite it is, and in which it has its axis. The body of dissolution, on the
other hand, the opposite of the body of rigidity, behaves aberrantly, and exhibits contingency in its
eccentric path as in its physical existence. One can therefore suspect of these bodies that the
proximity of a large planet could change their course. They show themselves to be a superficial
concretion, which may just contingently turn itself again into dust.
The moon has no atmosphere and therefore lacks the meteorological process. It shows only high
mountains and craters, and the combustion of this rigidity in itself It has the shape of a crystal,
which Heim (one of the few ingenious geologists) has described as the original form of the earth as
a merely solid body.
The comet appears as a formal process and unstable mass of vapour; none of them has exhibited
anything of a solid nature, such as a nucleus. In contrast to the image of the ancients, that comets
are merely meteors, more recent astronomers have not been as inflexible and presumptuous. Until
now only the return of some of them has been demonstrated; others were calculated to return, but
did not arrive. Suggestions brought forward by astronomers also indicate that the previously held
formal view of comets, as crisscross manifestations appearing in conflict with the coherence of the
system, should in time be discarded. Then the idea could be accepted that the other bodies of the
system protect themselves against comets, that is, that the other bodies of the system function as
necessary organic moments of protection. This view would afford better grounds for comfort in
regards to the dangers of comets than the reasons which have been adduced so far.
§ 224.
(3) The antithesis that has gone back into itself is the earth or the planet as such. It is the body of
the individual totality, in which rigidity opens up into a separation of real differences, and this
dissolution is held together by self-like points of unity.
One is accustomed to seeing the sun and the stars as more excellent natures than the planets,
because the first elevation of the reflection above sensory perception sets the abstract as the
highest point against that individual element which is not yet conceptualised. The name of a "mad
star" has arisen for individual bodies from the immediate view of their motion. In and for itself
however, this motion of the individual bodies as a turning on an axis around itself and also around
a central body is the most concrete expression of vitality, and therefore more splendid than both
the stillness in the centre of the system, and the subservient and extravagant motion of the lunar
and cometary bodies. The natural light of the central body is equally its abstract identity, with its
truth, like that of thought, in the concrete idea, in individuality.
In regards to the series of planets, astronomy has still not discovered any actual law governing the
determination of their proximity, their distancing, or even anything rational-I no longer find
satisfying what I tried to show in an earlier dissertation about this issue.-Moreover, the attempts by
the philosophy of nature to demonstrate the rationality of the series in its physical constitution,
which have until now been merely preliminary attempts to establish basic perspectives, can also be
viewed as unsatisfactory. What is irrational is to establish the thought of contingency as the basis,
and to see the idea of the organisation of the solar system according to the laws of musical
harmony, as for example in Kepler's thought, as an imaginative confusion, and not to respect the
profound belief that
there is reason in this system. For this belief was the sole basis of Kepler's discoveries. Instead, it
was the wholly awkward and confused use of the numerical relations of tones, applied by Newton
to colours, which acquired fame and remembrance.
(b.) The Elements
§ 225.
The body of individuality contains the determinations of elemental totality, which have an
immediate existence as free, independent bodies, as subordinate moments. As such they constitute
general physical elements.
§ 226.
(1) The element of undifferentiated simplicity is no longer the positive identity with itself the
self-manifestation which is light as such, which constitutes the proper, inner self of the individual
body; on the contrary, it is only a negative generality as the selfless moment of an other. This
identity is therefore the seemingly harmless but insidious and consuming power of the individual
and organic process. This element, air, behaves as a transparent but just as elastic fluid, which
absorbs and penetrates everything.
§ 227.
(2) The elements of the antithesis are (a) being for itself not the indifferent being of rigidity, but
rather being for itself posited in individuality as a moment, and therefore material selfhood, light
identical to heat: fire. This element is materialised time, absolutely restless and consuming, and
causes the self-consumption of the subsisting body as it conversely destroys the body through its
external approach. In consuming another, fire consumes itself.
§ 228.
(b) The other element is the neutral element, the antithesis which coalesces into itself. Without
individuality, however, and thus without rigidity and determination in itself it is a thoroughgoing
equilibrium that dissolves all determinacy mechanically posited in it. It receives its limitation of
shape only from outside, and without the unrest of the process in itself but at the most the
possibility of process, namely, solubility. This element, water, can assume a gaseous and a solid
form as a state apart from its characteristic state, that of internal indeterminacy.
§ 229.
(3) Earth, however, the element of the developed difference and its individual determination, is in
the first place still indeterminate: earthiness, as such.
(c) The Elementary Process
§ 230.
The individual identity, by which the different elements in terms of both their difference from each
other and their unity with each other are bound, is a dialectic which constitutes the physical life of
the earth, the meteorological process. It is in this process alone that the elements, as dependent
moments, have their existence, being generated in it and posited as existent.
just as the determinations of ordinary mechanics and the dependent bodies are applied to absolute
mechanics and the free central bodies, so too, the finite physics of the single individual bodies is
taken to be the same as the free, independent physics of the process of the earth. It is seen as a
triumph of science that the same determinations are recognised and demonstrated in the general
process of the earth as are found in the external and dependent processes of isolated physical
corporeality. The demonstration of this likeness is effected by changing the determinations, through
abstraction, from their characteristic differences and conditions into superficial generalities like
attraction. Thus forces and laws are imaginatively drawn in which the particular, the concrete
concept, and the conditions are lacking and are then fantasised as an addition, partly as an external
substance and partly by analogy.
A primary difference marks the fixed idea 'of the substantial, immutable diversity of the elements,
which is posited once and for all by the understanding on the basis of the processes of the isolated
materials. Where higher transitions occur in these finite processes, where, for example, water is
solidified into a crystal, where light and heat vanish, and so on, the obstinacy of formal thought has
recourse to the nebulous and to some extent meaningless conceptions of 44 solution," "becoming
bound or latent," and so on. Here, too, essentially belongs the transformation of all relationships in
physical phenomena into "substances" and "materials," partly imponderable, so that each physical
existence becomes the chaos previously mentioned of materials passing in and out of each other's
pores. Such views conflict not only with every concept, but also with reasonable thinking.
§ 231.
The process of the earth is continuously ignited by its general self the activity of light, its primordial
relationship to the sun. One moment of this process is the diremption of substantial identity, the
development of moments of the independent antithesis into a tension between rigidity and selfless
neutrality. Through this tension the earth tends towards resolution into, on the one hand, a crystal,
a moon, or on the other hand into a fluid body, a comet, and the moments seek to realise their
connection with their independent roots.
§ 232.
The other moment of the process is that being for itself towards which both sides of the antithesis
strive, suspends itself as negativity pushed to its extreme;-it becomes the self-igniting destruction of
the different existence sought by the moments. Through this process the substantial identity of the
moments is produced, and the earth transforms itself into fertile individuality.
The thunderstorm is the complete manifestation of this process, whereas the other meteorological
phenomena are beginnings or moments and undeveloped elaborations of it. Concerning
thunderstorms, however, physics has so far been unable to propose a satisfactory
explanation-since it limits its perspective to the conditions of the external process-, neither of rain
formation (in spite of de Luc's observations and the conclusions drawn from them, and, among the
Germans, the arguments made by the clever Lichtenberg against the theory of dissolution, whose
conclusions have at least been retained to some extent) nor of lightning and thunder. It has had just
as little success with other meteorological phenomena, in particular with meteorites, in which the
process progresses as far as the beginning of an earthly core.
§ 233.
The concept of matter, gravity, sets out its moments in elemental nature, initially in the form of
independent realities. The earth is initially the abstract ground of individuality, and posits itself in its
process as the negative unity of the abstract, mutually separating elements, and consequently as the
real ground and actuality of individualisation. Now, in this actuality, the elements present
themselves as being unified together in concrete points of unity.
C.
The Physics of Individuality
§ 234.
The individual body is matter, brought together by the particularity of the elements out of the
generality of gravity and into individuality. Thus it is determined in and for itself and has by virtue of
its individuality a characteristic form which constitutes the unity of the differentiation of a body. —
This individuality is (a) immediate or at rest, a shape; (b) its separation into the diversity of
features and the tension of differences; (c) process, in which the shape dissolves just as much as,
in its determinateness in and for itself emerges.
(a) Shape
§ 235.
The individuality of matter in its immediate existence is the immanent form, which gives its own
determinate difference to that material of the body which itself has in the first place only a
superficial unit, and then one particular determinacy as its essence.
This is the shape, the specific kind of inward coherence of matter and its external border in space;
— the individuality of the mechanism.
The specification of matter as an element is at this point shapeless, because it is still only a
singularity. Regarding the form of the shape, and individuality in general, it is preferable to avoid
the image of an external, mechanical style and composition. It may help in this case to distinguish
between the externality of style and the inwardness of the shape's coherence, but the essential
point is to remember the peculiar differentiation which arises from this distinction, which at the
same time constitutes a determinate, self-identical unity in the relation.
§ 236.
The abstract specification is the specific gravity or density of matter, the relation of the weight of its
mass to the volume. In this relation the material selfhood tears itself away from the abstract,
general relations to the central body, ceases to be the uniform filling of space, and opposes a
specific being in itself to an abstract being apart from itself
The varying density of matter is often explained by the assumption of pores; - though "to explain"
means in general to refer a phenomenon back to the accepted, familiar determinations of the
understanding, and no conceptions are more familiar than those of "composition," "pieces and their
details," and "emptiness." Therefore nothing is clearer than to use the imaginative invention of pores
to comprehend the densification of matter. These would be empty interstices, though physics does
not demonstrate them, despite its attempt to speak of them as at hand and its claim to be based on
experience and observation. What is beyond these and is merely assumed is the matter of thought.
It does not occur to physics, however, that it has thoughts, which is true in at least two senses and
here in a third sense: the pores are only imaginative inventions.
An immediate example of the peculiar specification of gravity offered by physics is furnished by the
phenomenon that, when a bar of iron, evenly balanced on its fulcrum, is magnetised, it loses its
equilibrium and shows itself to be heavier at one pole than at the other.-The axioms presupposed
by physics in its mode of representing density are: (1) that equal amounts of equally large material
parts weigh the same;-in this way the formal identity of gravity remains consistent-(2) the measure
of the number of parts is the amount of weight, but (3) also of space, so that bodies of equal
weight occupy equal amounts of space; (4) consequently, when equal weights are found in
different volumes, the equality of the spaces is preserved by the assumption of pores which fill the
space.
Kant has already contrasted intensity to the quantitative determination of the amount, and, instead
of positing that the heavier body contains more particles in a certain space, he has assumed that in
the heavier body the same number of particles fill space to a greater degree. In this way he created
"dynamic physics." At least the determination of the intensive quantum would be just as correct as
that of an extensive quantum; but this distinction (cf § 56) is empty and in itself nothing. Here the
intensive determination of size, however, has this advantage: that it points to the category of
measure and indicates initially a being in itself which as a conceptual determination is an immanent
determinacy of form, and only existent as quantum. But to distinguish between extensive or
intensive quantum differences, - and dynamic physics goes no further than this-does not express
any reality.
§ 237.
Density is at first only a simple determinacy. The simple determinacy is, however, essentially a
determination of form as a unity split apart from itself. Thus it constitutes the principle of
brittleness, the shaping relation of its consistently maintained points.
The previously mentioned particles, molecules of matter, are an external determination of
reflection. The real significance of the determination of the unit is that it is the immanent form of
shaping.
§ 238.
The brittle is the subjective entity existing for itself but it must deploy the difference of the concept.
The point becomes the line and posits itself as an opposed extreme to the line; the two are held by
their middle term and point of indifference in their antithesis. This syllogism constitutes the principle
of shaping in its developed determinacy, and is, in this abstract rigour, magnetism.
Magnetism is one of the determinations which inevitably became prominent when thought began to
recognise itself in determinate nature and grasped the idea of a philosophy of nature. For the
magnet exhibits in a simple, naive way the nature of the concept. The poles are not particular
things; they do not possess sensory, mechanical reality, but rather an ideal reality; the point of
indifference, in which they have their substance, is the unity in which they exist only as
determinations of the concept, and the polarity is an opposition of only such moments. The
phenomena revealed by magnetism as merely particular are merely and repeatedly the same
determinations, and not diverse features which could add data to a description. That the individual
magnetic needle points to the north, and thus to the south as well, is a manifestation of general
terrestrial magnetism: in two such empirical magnets the poles named similarly repel each other,
whereas the poles named differently attract. And precisely this is magnetism, namely, that the same
or indifferent will split apart and oppose each other in the extreme, and the dissimilar or different
will posit its indifference. The differently named poles have even been called friendly, and the
similarly named poles have been called hostile.
The statement, however, that all bodies are magnetic has an unfortunate double meaning. The
correct meaning is that all real, and not merely brittle, figures contain this concept; but the incorrect
meaning is that all bodies also have this principle implicitly in its rigorous abstraction, as magnetism.
It would be an unphilosophical thought to want to show that a form of the concept is at hand in
nature, and that it exists universally in its determinacy as an abstraction. For nature is rather the
idea in the element of being apart from itself so that, like the understanding, it retains the moments
of the concept as dispersed and depicts them so in reality, but in the higher organic things the
differentiated forms of the concept are unified as the highest concretion.
§ 239.
At the opposite end from magnetism, which as linear spatiality and the ideal contrast of extremes is
the abstract concept of the shape, stands its abstract totality the sphere, the shape of the real
absence of shape, of fluid indeterminacy, and of the indifferent elasticity of the parts.
§ 240.
Between the two actually shapeless extremes contained within magnetism as the abstract concept
of the figure there appears, as an immanent form of juxtaposition distinct from that determined by
gravity, a kind of magnetism transformed into total corporeality, cohesion.
§ 241.
The common understanding of cohesion merely refers to the individual moment of quantitative
strength of the connection between the parts of a body. Concrete cohesion is the immanent form
and determinacy of this connection, and comprehends both external crystallisations and the
fragmentary shapes or central shapes, crystallisation which displays itself inwardly in transparent
movement.
§ 242.
Through external crystallisation the individual body is sealed off as an individual against others, and
capable of a mechanical process with them. As an inwardly formed entity the body specifies this
process in terms of its behaviour as a merely general mass. In terms of its elasticity, hardness,
softness, viscosity, and abilities to extend or to burst, the body retains its individual determinacy in
resistance to external force.
§ 243.
As density, however, is at first only simple determinacy by virtue of the relation of volume to mass,
cohesion is this simplicity as the selfhood of individuality. The self-preservation of the body during
the vibration from a mechanical force is, therefore, also an emergence of its individual, pure
ideality, its characteristic motion in itself through its whole cohesion. It is the specific determination
of its ideal externality in itself through its self-identified time. In this vibration, the product of real
force and external pressure which the body survives in the form of its specified ideality, this simple
form achieves independent existence.
But entities without cohesion — which are inflexible and fluid are without resonance and in their
resistance, which is merely an external vibration, make only a noise.
§ 244.
This individuality, since it is at first here only immediate, can be suspended by mechanical force.
The friction, which brings together that difference of corporeality held apart by cohesion in the
negativity of a temporal moment, causes an initial or concluding selfdestruction of the body to
break forth. And the body exhibits its specific nature, in the relationship between the inner change
and the suspension of its cohesion, through the capacity for heat.
(b) The Particularisation of Differences
§ 245.
Shaping, the individualisation of the mechanism or of weight, turns into elemental particularisation.
The individual body has the totality of the elements within itself; as the subject of the same the
body contains the elements in the first place as attributes or predicates, but in the second place
these are retained only in immediate individuality, and thus they exist also as materials indifferent to
each other. Thirdly, they are the relations to the unbound elements and the processes of the
individual body with those elements.
In connection with the ancient, general idea that each body consists of the four elements, or with
the more recent view of Paracelsus that it consists of mercury or liquid, sulphur or oil, and salt, and
with many other ideas of this kind, it is to be remarked first that it is easy to refute these names if
one understands by them only the particular empirical substances that they primarily denote. It is,
however, not to be overlooked that these names were meant much more essentially to contain and
to express the determinations of the concept. Thus we should rather wonder at the vehemence
with which thought recognised only its own determination in such sensory things and held fast to its
general significance. On the other hand, such a conception and determination, since it has reason
as its source-which neither loses its way in the sensory games of phenomena and their confusion,
nor allows itself to be brought to forget itself-is elevated infinitely far above the thoughtless
investigation and chaotic narrative of the bodies' attributes. Here it is counted as a service and
praiseworthy to have made yet another particular discovery, instead of referring the many
particulars back to generality and the concept, and recognising the latter in them.
§ 246.
The body individualises: (a) the external self of light in its darkness into its specific opacity, colour;
(b) air, as abstract, selfless generality into the simplicity of its specific process, or, as odour, is
rather the specific individuality of the body in its simplicity, itself only as process; (c) water, the
abstract neutrality, is individualised into the determinate neutrality of saltiness, acidity, and,
immediately, into taste.
§ 247.
These particularised bodies are, in their general earthly totality, in the first place only superficially
related to one another and preserve their independence by being isolated from each other. But as
individuals they also stand in relation to each other and, to be sure, outside of the mechanical
relationship as particular individualities.
§ 248.
At first these bodies relate to each other as independent entities, but they then become manifest as
a mechanical relationship in an ideal movement, in the internal reverberation as sound. Now,
however, in real selfhood, they emerge as an electrical relationship to each other.
§ 249.
The being for itself of these bodies, as it is manifested in physical contact, is posited in each by the
difference from the other. Thus this being is not free, but rather an antithetical tension, in which,
however, it is not the nature of the body which emerges: only the reality of its abstract self a light,
is produced and, in fact, as a light set in opposition. The suspension of the diremption, the other
moment of this process, has an undifferentiated light as its product, which disappears immediately
as incorporeal. Apart from this abstract physical manifestation, the process has only the
mechanical effect of shaking as a significant outcome.
It is well-known that the earlier distinction between vitreous and resinous electricity, determined as
a part of sensory existence, was idealised by empirical science into the conceptual distinction
between positive and negative electricity. This is a remarkable instance of the way in which
empiricism, which initially attempts to grasp and retain generality in sensory form, suspends itself.
Although there has been much discussion recently of the polarisation of light, it would have been
more appropriate to reserve this expression for electricity than for the phenomena observed by
Malus, where transparent media, reflecting surfaces, and their various reciprocal inclinations, as
well as a determinate corner of light, are actually so many different kinds of situations, which
produces no difference in light itself but does show itself in light's shining.
The conditions under which positive and negative electricity emerge, in relation to smoother or
rougher surfaces, for example, a breath of air, and so on, are proof of the superficiality of the
electrical process, and show how little the concrete, physical nature of the body enters into it.
Similarly, the weak coloration of the two electrical lights, and the smell and the taste of them, show
only the beginning of a physicality in the abstract self of the light in which the process is maintained.
Negativity, the suspension of the antithetical tension, is mainly a shock. The self-positing,
self-identical self remains as such and consistent in the ideal spheres of space, time, and
mechanism. Light has scarcely begun to materialise itself as warmth, and the combustion which can
arise from the "discharge" is (Berthollet, Statique chimique, part I, sect. III, not. XI) rather a
direct effect of shock than the consequences of the realisation of light as fire.
Galvanism is the electrical process made permanent; it is permanence as the contact between two
different, non-brittle bodies, which, as part of their fluid nature (the "electrical conductive potential"
of metal), their entire immediate difference towards each other, and the surface qualities of their
relationship, maintain their tension mutually. The galvanic process occurs only through this
particular specificity of bodies of a more concrete and corporeal nature, and subsequently
undergoes a transition to the chemical process.
§ 250.
The individuality of the body is the negative unity of the concept, which is not self-positing simply
as an immediate entity and an unmoved generality, but only in the mediation of the process. The
body is therefore a product, and its shape a presupposition, for which the end that it will ultimately
achieve is also presupposed. The particularisation of the body, however, does not stop at either
mere inert diversity or the opposition between different attributes and their tension within the
body's pure selfhood. Rather, since the particular attributes are only the reality of this simple
concept, the body of their soul, of light, the entire corporeality moves into tension and the process
which is the development of the individual body, a process of isolation; — the chemical process.
(c) The Process of Isolation
§ 251.
The chemical process has its products as a presupposition, and therefore begins (1) from the
immediacy of their presupposition. In accord with the concept, the particular body is immediate
insofar as its attributes or material components are unified together into a simple determination and
become equal in the simplicity of specific gravity, thickness. Metals are solid, but in terms of their
particularity become fluid and capable of maintaining a determinate difference towards each other.
§ 252.
The middle term, through which the concept with its reality unites these solid differences as the
unity of both terms and the essence of each in itself, — posits the difference of one with the
difference of the other into a unity, and therefore becomes real as the totality of their concept — is
initially opposed to the immediate solidity of the extremes as an abstract neutrality, the element of
water. The process itself is the decomposition of water into opposed moments through the
presupposed difference of the extremes; they thereby suspend their abstraction and complete
themselves as the unity of their concept.
§ 253.
The moments into which water decomposes or, what amounts to the same thing, the forms under
which it is posited, are abstract, because water itself is only a physical element and not an
individual physical body; — the chemical elements of the antithesis are oxygen and hydrogen. The
metals, however, which have been integrated in the process, also receive only an abstract
integration from that abstract middle term, a reality which is only a positing of their difference, an
oxide.
The condition of lime as an oxide lies closest to the condition of metals, due to the inner
indifference of their solid nature. But nature's inability to hold on to the specific concept also allows
individual metals to change so far in the opposite direction that their oxide immediately comes to
resemble acids. It is well known that chemistry can portray, as amalgamations at least, the metallic
components of lime and potash, but also ammonia, strontium, barytes, and indeed, even of
different soils, and thereby depict these bodies as oxides. To be sure, the chemical elements are
such abstractions that when they are in the form of gases, in which they become manifest for
themselves, they interpenetrate like light and, notwithstanding their ponderability, their materiality
and impenetrability reveal themselves here to be raised to immateriality. Furthermore, oxygen and
hydrogen have a determination so dependent upon the individuality of the body that the
components of oxygen are determined in oxides, as a base in general, and, in the opposite
direction, as an acid, just as, by contrast, the acidic determination in hydrochloric acid reveals itself
as hydrogenation.
§ 254.
In contrast to the solid indifference of the particular corporeality stands physical brittleness, the
being of particularity grasped together in the unity of selfhood (brass represents the totality, as the
unification of sulphur and metal). This brittleness is the real possibility of combustion, the reality of
which is itself the self-devouring being for itself fire, and remains an external entity. Fire mediates
the inner difference of the combustible body through the physical element of abstract negativity,
air, with a being as posited or reality, and enhances it to acidity. Air, however, decomposes in its
negative principle into this, oxygen, and a dead positive residuum, nitrogen.
§ 255.
The chemical elements are: nitrogen, the abstraction of indifference; oxygen, the element of
self-subsistent difference, the burning element; hydrogen, the element belonging to the opposition
or self-subsistent indifference, the combustible element; and carbon, as the abstraction of their
individual element.
§ 256.
(2) The two products of the abstract processes, acids and bases or alkalis, are now no longer
merely but actually diverse, and (concentrated acids and alkalis enhanced caustically) are therefore
incapable of subsisting for themselves. In a state of restlessness they suspend themselves, and are
posited as identical to their opposites. This unity, in which their concept is realised, is the neutral
body, salt.
§ 257.
(3) In salt the concrete and shaped body is the product of its process. The relation of such diverse
bodies to each other involves to some extent the more precise particularisation of the bodies, from
which "elective affinities" derive. In general, however, these processes are for themselves more
real, since the extremes occurring in them are not abstract bodies. More specifically, they are the
dissolved particles of the neutral bodies into abstractions, the processes from which they are
produced, retrogressions back to oxides and acids, and further, both immediately and in abstract
forms, back to the indifferent bases, which manifest themselves in this way as products.
Empirical chemistry deals mainly with the particularity of the products, which are then ordered
according to superficial and abstract determinations. Metals, oxygen nitrogen and many other
bodies, earth, sulphur, phosphorous appear in this order together; just as chaotically, the more
abstract and the more real processes are posited on the same level. If a scientific form is to come
from this mixture, then each product should be determined according to the level of the process
from which it results and which gives it its particular significance. It is just as essential to distinguish
the levels of the abstraction or the reality of the process. Animal and vegetable substances belong
in any case to an entirely different order, and so little of their nature can be comprehended through
the description of the chemical process that much more is destroyed than saved, and only the
course of its death is grasped. These substances, however, should serve to work against that
metaphysics dominant in both chemistry and physics, namely, the thought or empty idea of the
unchangeability of matter, its composition and subsistence in matter. We see admitted in general,
however, that chemical substances lose those attributes in combination which they demonstrate
separately. Nevertheless the idea remains that these substances are the same things with the
attributes as without, and as things with these attributes they are not only products of the process.
An important step towards simplification of the particularities in the elective affinities is the law
discovered by Richter and Guiton Morveau, which states that neutral compounds suffer no change
regarding their state of solution when they are mixed in solution and the acids exchange bases with
each other. The quantitative scale of acids and alkalis has been constructed on the basis of this
law, according to which each individual acid has a particular relation for its saturation to each
alkali; so that, however, for every other acid whose quantitative unity is only different from the
others, now the alkalis have among each other the same relation to their saturation as to the other
acids, and similarly, acids display a constant relation among each other and relative to all the
different alkali.
Since, moreover, the chemical process has its determination in the concept, the empirical
conditions of a particular form, as for example electricity, are not as fixed as sensory
determinations and not as abstract moments as is represented for example by an elective affinity.
Berthollet, in his famous work Statique chimique, has brought together and investigated the
circumstances which produce changes in the results of chemical action, results often attributed only
to the conditions of the affinity, which are taken as constant and fixedly determined laws. He says:
"The superficiality which these explanations bring into science is prominently regarded as
progress."
§ 258.
The chemical process is, to be sure, in general terms, life, for the individual body in its immediacy
is suspended and brought forth by the process, so that the concept no longer remains an inner
necessity, but becomes manifest. But the body also achieves a mere appearance, and not
objectivity. This process is finite and transient, because the individual body has immediate
individuality, and therefore a limited particularity, so that the process has immediate and contingent
conditions. Fire and differentiation are extinguished in the neutral body, and it does not break apart
sufficiently in itself to divide. Similarly, difference exists at first in indifferent independence, but
does not stand for itself in relation to the other, nor does it activate itself
Certain chemical phenomena have led chemists to apply the determination of purposiveness in
explaining them. An example is the f that an oxide is reduced to a lower degree of oxidation than
that at which it can combine with the acid working on it, and a part of it is more strongly
oxidised-,-here the self-determination of the concept lies in the realisation.
§ 259.
In the chemical process the body thus displays the transiency of its immediate individuality both in
its emergence and its passing away, and presents itself as a moment of generality. In this immediate
individuality the concept has the reality which corresponds to it, a concrete generality which
derives from particularisation, and at the same time contains in itself the conditions and moments of
the total syllogism which fall apart from each other in the immediate chemical process; — the
organism.
III
Organic Physics
A. Geological Nature - B. Vegetable Nature - C. The Animal Organism
§ 260.
The real totality of the individual body, in which its particularity is made into a product and equally
suspends itself — elevates itself in the process into the first ideality of nature, but an ideality which
is fulfilled, and as self-related negative unity has essentially attained selfhood and become
subjective. With this accomplished, the idea has entered into existence, initially as an immediate
existence, Life. This is: (a) as shape, the general image of life, the geological organism; (b) as
particular or formal subjectivity, vegetable nature; (c) as individual, concrete subjectivity, animal
nature.
A.
Geological Nature
§ 261.
The general system of individual bodies is the earth, which in the chemical process initially has its
abstract individuality in particularisation, but as the totality it has an infinite relation to itself as a
general, self-dividing process; - and is, immediately, the subject and its product. As the immediate
totality, however, presupposed by subjective totality itself the body of the earth is only the shape
of the organism.
§ 262.
The members of this organism do not contain, therefore, the generality of the process within
themselves, they are the particular individuals, and constitute a system whose forms manifest
themselves as members of the unfolding of an underlying idea, whose process of development is a
past one.
§ 263.
The powers of this process, which nature leaves behind as independent entities beyond earth, are
the connection and the position of the earth in the solar system, its solar, lunar, and cometary life,
the inclination of its axis to the orbit and the magnetic axis. Standing in closer relation to these axes
and their polarisation is the distribution of sea and land: the compact spreading of land in the north,
the division and sharp tapering of the parts towards the south, the further separation into an old
and a new world, and the further division of the former into continents distinguished from one
another and from the new world by their physical, organic, and anthropological character, to
which an even younger and more immature continent is joined; — mountain ranges, and so on.
§ 264.
The physical organisation of the earth shows a series of stages of granitic activity, involving a core
of mountains in which the trinity of determinations is displayed, and leads through other forms
which are partly transitions and modifications, though its totality remains the existing foundation,
only more unequal and unformed within itself This is partly also an elaboration of its moments into
a more determinate difference and more abstract mineral moments, such as metals and fossil
objects generally, until it loses itself in mechanical stratifications and alluvial terrains lacking any
immanent formative development.
§ 265.
This crystal of life, the inanimate organism of the earth which has its concept in the sidereal
connection but possesses its own process as a presupposed past, is the immediate subject of the
meteorological process, which as an organised whole is in its complete determinateness. In this
objective subject the formerly elementary process is now objective and individual, — the
suspension of immediacy takes place, through which general individuality now emerges for itself
and life becomes vital or real. The first real vitality, which the fructified earth brings forth, is
vegetable nature.
B.
Vegetable Nature
§ 266.
The generality and individuality of life are still immediately identical in immediate vitality.
Consequently the process by which the plant differentiates itself into distinct parts and sustains
itself is one in which it comes out of itself and falls into pieces as several individuals, for which the
whole plant is more the basis than a subjective unity. A further consequence is that the
differentiation of the organic parts is only a superficial metamorphosis, and one part can easily pass
into the function of the other.
§ 267.
The process of shaping and reproduction of the single individual coincides in this way with the
process of genus formation. And because self-like generality, the subjective unit of individuality,
does not separate itself from real particularisation but is only submerged in it, the plant does not
move from its place, nor is it a selfinterrupting individualisation, but a continually flowing
self-nourishment. It does not relate itself to individualised inorganic nature, but to the general
elements. Nor is it capable of feeling and animal warmth.
§ 268.
Insofar, however, as life is essentially the concept which realises itself only through self-division
and reunification, the plant processes also diverge from each other. (1) But their inner process of
formation is to be seen partly as the positive, merely immediate transformation of nourishment
supplies into the specific nature of plants. On the one hand, and for the sake of essential simplicity,
this is the division into abstract generality of an implicitly inseparable individuality, as into the
negative of vitality, becoming wood. But on the other hand, on the side of individuality and vitality,
this is the process specifying itself in an outward direction.
§ 269.
(2) This is the unfolding of the parts as organs of different elementary relations, the division partly
into the relation to earth and into the air and water process which mediates them. Since the plant
does not hold itself back in inner, subjective generality against outer individuality, it is equally torn
out of itself by light, from which it takes the specific confirmation and individualisation of itself
knotted and multiplied into a multiplicity of individuals.
§ 270.
Since, however, the reproduction of the individual vegetable as a singularity is not the subjective
return into itself a feeling of self but inwardly becomes wooden, the production of the self of the
plant consequently moves in an outward direction. The plant brings forth its light as its own self in
the blossom, in which the neutral colour green is determined as a specific coloration, or, too, light
is produced as a white colour, purified from the dark.
§ 271.
Since the plant in this way offers itself as a sacrifice, this exteriorisation is at the same time the
concept realised by the process, the plant, which has produced itself as a whole, but which in the
process has come into opposition with itself. This, the highest point of the process, is therefore the
beginning of the process of sexual differentiation which occurs in the process of genus formation.
§ 272.
(3) The process of genus formation, as distinct from the processes of formation and reproduction
of the individual, is an excess in the actuality of plant nature, because those processes also directly
involve a dissolution into many individuals. But in the concept the process is, like subjectivity which
has converged with itself that generality in which the plant suspends the immediate individuality of
its organic life, and thereby grounds the transition into the higher organism.
C.
The Animal Organism
§ 273.
Organic individuality exists as subjectivity insofar as its individuality is not merely immediate
actuality but also and to the same extent suspended, exists as a concrete moment of generality,
and in its outward process the organism inwardly preserves the unity of the self This is the nature
of the animal which, in the reality and externality of individuality, is equally, by contrast,
immediately and inwardly self-reflected individuality, inwardly existing subjective generality.
§ 274.
The animal has contingent self-movement because its subjectivity is, like light and fire, ideality torn
from gravity, — a free time, which, as removed at the same time from real externality, determines
its place on the basis of inner chance. Bound up with this is the animal's possession of a voice in
which its subjectivity, existing in and for itself dominates the abstract ideality of time and space,
and manifests its self-movement as a free vibration within itself. It has animal warmth, as a
permanent preservation of the shape; interrupted intussusception; but primarily feeling, as the
individuality which in its determinacy is immediately general for itself and really selfdifferentiating
individuality.
§ 275.
The animal organism, as living generality, is the concept which passes through its three
determinations, each of which is in itself the same total identity of substantial unity and, at the same
time and as determined for itself by the form, is the transition into others, so that the totality results
from this process. It is only as this selfreproducing entity, not as an existing one, that the animal
organism is living.
§ 276.
The animal organism is therefore: (a) a simple, general being in itself in its externality, whereby real
determinacy is immediately taken up as particularity into the general, and is thereby the
unseparated identity of the subject with itself; — sensibility; — (b) particularity, as excitability from
the outside and, on the other hand, the counter-effect coming from the outward movement of the
subject; — irritability; — (c) the unity of these moments, the negative return to itself through the
relation of externality, and thereby the generation and positing of itself as an individual; —
reproduction. Inwardly, this is the reality and foundation of the first moments, and outwardly, this
is the articulation of the organism and its armament.
§ 277.
These three moments of the concept have their reality in three systems, namely, the nervous
system, the circulatory system, and the digestive system. The first is in the systems of the bones
and sensory apparatus, whereas the second turns outwardly on two sides in the lungs and the
muscles. The digestive system is, however, as a system of glands with skin and cellular tissue,
immediate, vegetative, reproductive, but as part of the actual system of the intestines it is the
mediating reproduction. The animal thus divides itself in the center (insectum) into three systems,
the head, thorax, and the abdomen, though, on the other hand, the extremities used for mechanical
movement and grasping constitute the moment of the individuality outwardly positing and
differentiating itself.
§ 278.
The idea of the living organism is the manifested unity of the concept with its reality; as the
antithesis of that subjectivity and objectivity, however, this unity exists essentially only as process.
It exists at the same time as the movement of the abstract relation of the living entity to itself which
dissolves itself into particularity, and, as the return into itself it is the negative unity of subjectivity
and totality. Each of these moments is itself a process, however as a concrete moment of the
living, and the whole is the unity of the three processes.
§ 279.
(1) The abstract process of living individuality is the process of inner formation in which the
organism converts its own members into a inorganic nature, into means, and feeds on itself Thus it
produces precisely this totality of its self-organisation, so that each member is reciprocally the end
and the means, and maintains itself through the others and in opposition to them. It is the process
which has the simple feeling of self as a result.
§ 280.
(2) The self-feeling of individuality is, in its negative return into itself immediately exclusive and in a
state of tension with inorganic nature as with real and external nature. (3) Since animal
organisation is immediately reflected into itself in this external relation, this ideal relationship is the
theoretical process and, indeed, the determinate feeling, which differentiates itself into the multiple
sensory qualities of inorganic nature.
§ 281.
The senses and the theoretical processes are therefore: (1) the sense of the mechanical sphere of
gravity, of cohesion and its variation, of heat, and feeling as such; (2) the senses of antithesis, of
the particularised principle of air, and of equally realised neutrality, of water, and of the antitheses
of its dissolution; — smell and taste; (3) the sense of the pure, essential, but exterior identity, of the
side belonging to the materials of gravity: fire, light, and colour; and (4) the sense for the depiction
of subjective reality, or of the independent inner ideality of the body standing in opposition, the
sense of hearing.
The threefold moments of the concept therefore convert here into a fivefold number, because the
moment of particularity or of the antithesis in its totality is itself threefold. Another reason for the
transition is that the animal organism is the reduction of inorganic nature split apart from itself but at
the same time it is its developed totality. Because it is still natural subjectivity, the moments of
nature's developed totality exist separately, but as an infinite unity. The determinations of this
subjectivity, therefore, have the sense of touch as their particular sense, the most fundamental,
general sense, which thus could also better be called feeling. Particularity is the antithesis, and this
is the identity and the antithesis itself Thus the sense of light belongs to this particularity, an identity
which constitutes one side of the antithesis, as abstract, but precisely therefore determines itself.
Also belonging here are the two senses of the antithesis itself as such, air and water, both like the
others in their embodied specification and individualisation. To the sense of individuality belongs
that subjectivity which, as purely self-demonstrating subjectivity, is tone.
§ 282.
The real process of inorganic nature begins equally with feeling, namely, the feeling of real
externality, and with this feeling the negation of the subject, which is at the same time the positive
relation to itself and its certainty in contrast to its negation. It begins with the feeling of a lack, and
the drive to suspend the lack, which is the condition of being stimulated externally.
Only what is living feels a lack, for it alone in nature is the concept, the unity of itself and of its
specific opposite; in this relation it is a subject. Where there is a limitation, it is a negation only for
a third, an external reflection. It is lack, however, insofar as in one sense the overcoming of the
lack is also at hand, and the contradiction is posited as such. A being which is capable of having
and enduring the contradiction of itself in itself is the subject; this constitutes its finitude. — Reason
proves its infinitude precisely at that point when reference is made to finite reason, since it
determines itself as finite. For negation is finitude and a lack only for that which is the suspended
being of itself the infinite relation to itself. Thoughtlessness, however, stops short at the abstraction
of the limitation, and in life, too, where the concept itself enters into existence, it fails to grasp the
concept, but remains fixed on the determinations of representation: drives, instincts, and needs.
An important step towards a true representation of the organism is the substitution of the category
of stimulation by external forces for the category of the intervention of external causes. This latter
contains the beginning of idealism, the assertion that nothing at all can have a positive relation to
the living if the living being is not in and for itself the possibility of the relation itself that is, not
determined by the concept, and thus in general not immanent to the subject.
But perhaps the most unphilosophical of any such scientific concoctions of the reflective categories
is the introduction of such formal and material relationships into the theory of stimulation, which has
long been regarded as philosophical. This includes for example the entirely abstract antithesis of
receptivity to active capacity, which supposedly stand to each other as factors in inverse relations
of magnitude. The result of this is to reduce all differences in the organism to the formalism of a
merely quantitative differentiation, involving increase and decrease, strengthening and weakening,
in other words, removing all possible traces of the concept. A theory of medicine built on these
and determinations of the understanding is complete in half a dozen propositions, and it is no
wonder that it spread rapidly and found many adherents.
The cause of this philosophical confusion, which initiated the tendency to befriend nature, lay in the
basic error of initially determining the absolute as the absolute indifference of subject and object,
and then treating all determinations as only quantitative differences. It is the case, rather, that the
absolute form, the concept and the principle of life, has for its soul only the qualitative difference
which consumes itself in itself But because this truly infinite negativity was not recognised, it was
believed that the absolute identity of life, as the attributes and the modes in the external
understanding are for Spinoza, can not be fixed without making the difference into a merely
external difference of the reflection. In this way, however, life is left altogether lacking the salient
point of selfhood, the principle of self-movement, the differentiation of the self and the principle of
individuality in general.
Another crude and utterly unphilosophical procedure is the one which attempted to give the formal
determinations a real meaning by replacing the conceptual determinations with carbon and
nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen, and determined the difference previously characterised as
intensive as now more or less of the one or another substance, whereas the active and positive
relation of the external stimulus would be the addition of a lacking substance. One example is the
assertion that in an asthenia, or a nerve fever, nitrogen has the upper hand in the organism because
the brain and nerves are supposedly in general intensified nitrogen, since chemical analysis has
shown this to be the principal ingredient of these organic structures. The ingestion of carbon is
therefore supposedly indicated in order to restore the balance of these substances, in other words,
in order to restore health. The remedies which have been shown to work empirically against nerve
fever are, for this same reason, regarded as belonging to the side of carbon, and this superficial
compilation and opinion are presented as explanation and proof The crudity of this procedure
consists in taking the external Caput mortuum, the dead substance, a dead life which chemistry
has already destroyed a second time, for the essence of a living organ, and indeed, for its concept.
This last argument gives rise to that highly facile formalism which replaces the determinations of the
concept with sensuous materials like chemical substances, as well as relationships belonging to the
sphere of inorganic nature, like the north and south polarity of magnetism, or the differences
between magnetism and electricity. This is a formalism which conceives the natural universe and
develops its conception in such a way that it attaches a readymade schema of north and south or
east and west polarities externally to the spheres and differences it uses. For this purpose there is a
great variety of forms possible. For it remains a matter of choice whether one employs the
determinations of the totality for the schema, as they appear for example in the chemical sphere,
oxygen, hydrogen, and so on, and transfers them to magnetism, mechanism, electricity, and the
masculine and the feminine, contraction and expansion, and so on, then applies them to the other
spheres.
§ 283.
Need and excitement are connected to the relation between the universal and the particular
mechanism (sleeping and waking), the relation to air (breathing and skin processes), water (thirst),
and the individualised earth, namely, the particular forms of the earth (cf. hunger, § 275). Life, the
subject of these moments of totality, develops inwardly a tension between itself as concept and the
moments of a reality external to itself and is the ongoing conflict in which it overcomes this
externality. Because the animal can only exist as an essentially individual entity, and this only
individually, this objectification is not adequate to its concept and therefore turns back constantly
from its satisfaction to the condition of need.
§ 284.
The mechanical seizure of the external object is only the beginning of the unification of the object
with the living animal. Since the animal is hence a subject, the simple negativity of the punctured
unity, the assimilation can be neither of a mechanical nor a chemical nature, for in these processes
both the material substances as the conditions and the activity remain externally in opposition to
each other, and lack living, absolute unity.
§ 285.
In the first place, because the living organism is the general power over the nature external and
opposed to it, assimilation is the immediate fusion of the ingested material with animality, an
infection by the latter and simple transformation (cf. § 278). Secondly, since the power of the
living organism is the relation of itself to itself in mediation, assimilation is digestion. It is the
opposition of the subject to its immediate assimilation, so that the former stimulates itself on the
other hand as a negative, and emerges as the process of the antithesis, the process of animal water
(of stomach and pancreatic juices, animal lymph as such) and of animal fire (of the gall, in which
the accomplished return of the organism into itself from its concentration in the spleen is
determined as being for itself as active consumption).
§ 286.
This animal stimulation is turned at first against the external potency, which, however, is placed
immediately on the side of the organism by the infection (§ 277). But this stimulus, as the antithesis
and the being for itself of the process, has at the same time the determination of externality over
against the generality and simple self-relation of the living organism. Both aspects together, initially
appearing on the side of the subject as means, actually constitute therefore the object and the
negative side in conflict with the organism, which has to overcome and to digest.
§ 287.
This inversion of attitude is the reflection of the organism into itself the negation of its own
negativity of outwardly directed activity. As a natural being it combines the individuality which it
reaches in the process with its generality as disjunctive, in such a way that on the one hand it
separates from itself the first negation, the externality of the object and its own activity, on the
other hand, and as immediately identical with this negation, with this means reproduces itself Thus
the outward moving process is transformed and transposed into the first formal processes of
reproduction from its own self.
The primary moment in digestion is the immediate action of life as the power over the inorganic
object, which it sets against itself and presupposes as its stimulating attraction only insofar as it is
itself identical with it. This action is infection and immediate transformation. It has been empirically
demonstrated and shown to accord with the concept, by the experiments of Spallanzani and
others and by recent physiology, that this immediacy, which the living organism has as a generality,
continues itself into its food without any further mediation, by its mere contact with it and simply by
taking it up into its own warmth and sphere. This is a refutation of both the theory of a mechanical,
fictitious sorting out and separating of parts already homogeneous and useful, and the theory of
mediation conceived as a chemical process. But the investigations of the mediating actions have
not found more specific moments in this transformation (as appears, for example, in vegetable
substances as a series of fermentations). On the contrary, they have shown for example that a
great deal of food moves straight from the stomach into the mass of gastric juices, without passing
through other mediating stages, that the pancreatic juice is further nothing more than saliva, that the
pancreas could quite as well be dispensed with, and so on.
The last product, the chyle, which the thoracic duct takes up and which is discharged into the
blood, is the same lymph which is secreted by each intestine and organ, effects the skin and
lymphatic system in the immediate process of transformation, and is everywhere found already
prepared. The lower organisms of animal life, which, moreover, are nothing more than lymph
coagulated into a membranous point or tube — a simple intestinal canal — do not go beyond this
immediate transformation. The mediated digestive process in the higher organisations of animal life
is, in respect of its characteristic product, just such a superfluity as, in the plant, the generation of
seeds mediated by "sexual difference." The faeces often show, especially in children, in whom
after all the increase of material is most apparent, the greatest part of the food unchanged, mixed
mainly with animal substances, bile, phosphorus, and the like, and the primary action of the
organism to be to overcome and to eliminate its own products.
The syllogism of the organism is not, therefore, the syllogism of external purposiveness, for it does
not stop at directing its activity and form against the outer subject but makes this process, which
because of its externality is on the verge of becoming mechanical and chemical, into an object itself
And since it is nature, in the uniting of itself with itself in its outward process, it is no less a
disjunctive activity, which rids itself of this process, abstracts itself away from its anger towards the
object, from this one-sided subjectivity, and thereby becomes for itself what it is in itself: the
identity of its concept and its reality. Thus the end and the product of its activity are found to be
that which it already is originally and at the beginning. In this way the satisfaction accords with
reason: the process outward into external differentiation is converted into the process of the
organism with itself and the result is not the mere production of a means, but of the end.
§ 288.
Through the process with external nature the animal achieves self-certainty and its subjective
concept, truth and objectivity as a single individual. And it is the production of itself just as much
as its self-preservation, or reproduction as production of its first concept. Thus the concept joins
together with itself and is, as concrete generality, genus. The disjunction of the individual finding
itself in the genus is the sexual difference, the relation of the subject to an object which is itself such
a subject.
§ 289.
This relation is the drive: the individual as such is not adequate to its genus, nor does this adequacy
fall into an external reflection. The individual is at the same time, in this limitation of the genus, the
identical relation of the genus to itself in one unity. The individual thus has the feeling of this lack
and exists in the natural difference of the sexes.
§ 290.
(3) The process of genus formation has, as in the inorganic process of chemism, taken the general
concept as the essence of individuals to a general extreme. The tension between the individual and
the inadequacy of its single actuality drives each to have its self-feeling only in the other of its
genus, and to integrate itself through union with the other. Through this mediation the concrete
generality joins together with itself and yields individual reality.
§ 291.
This product is the negative identity of the differentiated individuals and is, as realised genus, an
asexual life. But on the side of nature the product is only implicitly this genus and distinct from the
individuals which have perished in it. It is thus itself an individual which has in itself the
determination of the same difference and transiency. But at the same time, in this new life in which
individuality is suspended, the same subjectivity is retained positively and in this, its return into itself
the genus as such has emerged for itself in reality, and has become a higher being than nature.
§ 292.
Underlying the various orders and structures of the animals lies the general type of the animal
determined by the concept, which nature manifests partly in the different steps of its development
from the simplest organisation to the most complete, in which it is the instrument of the spirit, and
partly in the different circumstances and conditions of elementary nature.
The concept of the animal has the concept itself as its essence, because it is the actuality of the
idea of life. The nature of its generality enables it to have a simpler and more developed existence
which corresponds more or less to it. Thus the concept in its determinacy can not be grasped from
existence itself. The classes, in which it emerges developed and manifested completely in its
moments, appear as a particular existence in contrast to the others, and can also have a bad
existence in them. The concept is already presupposed for the judgment of whether the existence
is bad. If, as usual, existence is presupposed, then it will undoubtedly be used in an empirical way
to reach no fixed determination, and all particular attributes will also seem to be lacking.
Acephalous animals, for example, have been used as proof that people can live without brains.
Zoology, like the natural sciences generally, has concerned itself primarily with discovering more
certain and simpler signs for subjective cognition. Only since this goal of an "artificial" system for
classifying animals was given up has the way been opened for a broader view, and among the
empirical sciences there is hardly one which in recent times has expanded as much as zoology,
particularly through its auxiliary science of comparative anatomy. This expansion has not occurred
solely in the sense of more observations, for none of the sciences lacks these, but in the sense of
arranging its material to accord with reason.
Partly it is the habits of individual animals, viewed as a coherent whole determining the
construction of every part, which have become the main point, so that the great founder of
comparative anatomy, Cuvier, could boast that he could recognise the essential nature of the entire
animal from a single bone. Partly it is that the general type of the animal has been traced in the
various, still apparently incomplete and disparate forms, and its importance recognised in the
hardly noticed suggestion, as well as in the mixture of organs and functions, and in this way has
been raised above and beyond its particularity into its generality. A primary feature of this method
is the recognition of how nature shapes and adapts this organism to the particular element in which
it is placed, an environment which can also be one particular species of plant or another of animal.
It is due to the immediacy of the idea of life that the concept, whether or not it is only determined
in and for itself does not exist as such in life. Its existence is therefore subjected to the manifold
conditions and circumstances of external nature, and can appear in the most inadequate forms.
The fecundity of the earth causes life to break out in every way. Even perhaps less than the other
spheres of nature, therefore, can the animal world present in itself an independent, rational system
of organisation, or retain a hold on forms determined by the concept and preserve them against the
imperfection and mixture of conditions, from confusion, degeneration, and transitional forms. This
weakness of the concept, which exists in the animal though not in its fixed, independent freedom,
entirely subjects even the genus to the changes that are shared by the life of the animal. And the
environment of external contingency in which the animal must live exercises perpetual violence
against the individual. Hence the life of the animal seems in general to be sick, and the animal's
feeling seems to be insecure, anxious, and unhappy.
§ 293.
Due to the externality of its existence, the individual organism can not accord with its
determination. It finds itself in a state of disease when one of its systems or organs, stimulated to
conflict with an organic power, establishes itself for itself and persists in its particular activity
against the activity of the whole. For the fluidity and pervasive process of the activity is thus
obstructed.
§ 294.
The characteristic manifestation of disease is, thus, when the identity of the entire organic concept,
as the successive course of life's movement through its different moments, sensibility, irritability,
and reproduction, presents itself as fever. This fever is to the same extent both the isolated activity
in opposition to the course of totality, and the effort towards and beginning of healing.
§ 295.
Medicine provokes the organism to remove the inorganic power with which the activity of the
individual organ or system is entangled and thereby isolated. Essentially, however, the irritation of
the formal activity of the particular organ or system is suspended, and its fluidity is restored within
the whole. The medicine achieves this as an irritant, but one which is even more difficult to
assimilate and to overcome, and against which the organism is compelled to exert its entire
strength. While it acts in this way against an external entity, the organism steps out of the limitation
with which it had become identical and in which it had become involved.
Medication must in general be viewed as an indigestible substance. But indigestibility is only a
relative category, though not in the vague sense in which it is usually taken, as if it really meant
something easily digestible by weaker constitutions. On the contrary, such an easily digestible
substance is indigestible for stronger individuals. The true relativity, that of the concept, which has
its actuality in life, consists, when expressed in the quantitative terms which count as valid here, in
homogeneity being greater, the more the opposed terms are intrinsically self-subsistent. The
highest qualitative form of relativity in the living organism has manifested itself as the sexual relation,
in which independent individualities are identical to each other.
For the lower forms of animal life, which have not achieved a difference within themselves, the
digestible substance is the substance without individuality, such as water for plants. For children,
the digestible substance is partly the completely homogeneous animal lymph, mother's milk, a
substance which is already digested or rather has further differentiated within itself and partly the
least individualised of mixed substances. Substances of this kind, on the other hand, are
indigestible for stronger natures. These natures digest more easily individualised animal substances,
or plant juices which sunlight has matured to a more powerful self and are therefore "spirituous,"
instead of for example, the vegetable products still in their merely neutral colour and closer to the
chemical process proper. Through this more intensive selfhood the former substances form an
even stronger contrast, but for that very reason they are more homogeneous irritants. Taken
together, medications are negative irritants, poisons, a stimulant and at the same time an
indigestible substance, to the extent that the organism alienated from itself in disease must gather
up its strength, turn against the medication as an external, foreign body, and thereby achieve again
the self-feeling of its individuality.
But Brownianism, regarded as a complete system of medicine, is merely an empty formalism,
especially in its determination of diseases and the actions of medications according to sthenic or
asthenic body types, the latter further divided into direct and indirect asthenia. Brown's theory is,
moreover, too often limited by formulations derived from the natural sciences, such as his recourse
to the factors of carbon and nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen as explanations, or magnetic,
electrical, and chemical moments. Nevertheless, his theory did have two important consequences:
through him, the view of merely particular and specific issues, both in diseases and medications,
was expanded to the general in them as essential elements; and through his opposition to the
previously used method, which was even more fixed on asthenic and asthenising questions than the
subsequent phases, he showed that the organism does not react to the most antithetical kind of
treatment in such an opposite way, but that frequently, at least in the final results, it reacts in a
similar and hence general way. Thus the simple identity of the organism with itself as its true
essence is demonstrated in opposition to a particular entanglement of one of its systems with
specific irritants.
§ 296.
The animal individual, in overcoming and moving beyond particular inadequacies in conflict with its
concept, does not suspend the inadequacy in general which it has within it, namely, that its idea is
the immediate idea, or that the animal stands within nature. Its subjectivity is only the concept in
itself but not itself for itself and exists only as an immediate individuality. That inner generality is
thus opposed to its actuality as a negative power, from which the animal suffers violence and
perishes, because its existence does not itself contain this generality within itself.
§ 297.
As abstract, this negative generality is an external actuality which exerts mechanical violence
against the animal and destroys it. As its own concrete generality it is the genus, and the living
organism submerges its different individuality partly in the process of genus formation. Partly,
however, the living organism directly suspends its inadequacy in relation to the genus, which is its
original sickness and the inborn seed of death, since it imagines the individuality of its death. But
because this generality is immediate, the individual achieves only an abstract objectivity, it blunts its
activity, grows ossified, and thus kills itself by itself.
§ 298.
But the subjectivity of the living organism is just as essentially in itself identical to concrete
generality and the genus. Its identity with the genus is thus only the suspension of the formal
antithesis, of immediacy, and of the generality of individuality. Since this subjectivity is, moreover,
the concept in the idea of life, it is in itself the absolute being in itself of reality. Through this
suspension of its immediacy subjectivity coalesces itself absolutely with itself and the last
self-externality of nature is suspended. In this way nature has passed over into its truth, into the
subjectivity of the concept, whose objectivity is itself the suspended immediacy of individuality, the
concrete generality, the concept which has the concept as its existence — into the spirit.
The End