(α) If we ask ordinary consciousness[206] for a definition of Life, we have two determinations presented, either the imaginative conception of it as bodily life, or as soul-life. In the same view we distinguish these two determinations with qualities peculiarly belonging to each. This contrast we set up between soul and body is also of great importance in the more philosophical consideration of our subject. And it is no less part of our inquiry to investigate it. At the same time we would point out that the philosophical interest concentrates itself quite as much on the unity which exists between soul and body, a part of this inquiry which a really adequate survey of the subject has at all times found beset with the greatest difficulties. It is, however, precisely in virtue of this unity that Life is the first genuine appearance of the Idea in Nature. We must consequently apprehend the identity of soul and body as no fortuitous connection[207], but a union of profounder significance. In other words, we must recognize the body and its members as the objective existence of the notion itself in systematic articulation, which in the members of the living organism, secures an objective existence for its determinate features, analogously no doubt, if on a higher plane, to the facts presented by the solar system. Within this real existence the notion asserts itself in like manner as the ideal unity of all these determinate parts. This ideal unity is the soul. The soul is the substantive unity and interfused universality which is no less a simple relation of self-determining than it is ideal Being-for-itself or self-coherent totality. This is the higher view of the union between soul and body. To put it in other words both are not merely distinct aspects set side by side; they are one and the same totality of identical determinants. Just as the Idea generally can only be grasped in its explicit reality as the notion evolving itself as such[208], in which conception the differentiation and unity of both sides, that is both the notion and its objective reality, are inseparably present, in the same way Life must be conceived as the unity of both soul and body.
And further, the subjective no less than substantive unity of soul within the body is presented us and exemplified in Feeling. The feeling of a living organism is, that is to say, not merely an independent product of a particular member, but it is also this ideal and simple unity of the entire organism. It is carried through every member of the body is felt throughout in more than a hundred places at once; and indeed, to put it shortly, rather than saying there are many thousand sensitive points[209] in a single organism we should more justly say there is but one, namely, the subject of consciousness. And inasmuch as the animating principle of organic Nature includes in itself this distinction between the real existence of the organic members, and the abstract or simple self-coherence within such parts, which we call the growing soul, mediating between them both by virtue of its inherent unity, such a principle of Life stands on a higher plane than that of inorganic Nature. Only with Life is the Idea existent, and only thus is the Idea truth. No doubt even in the organic world this truth can be extinguished. We find the body unable to perfect its essential ideality and animating energy. Such is the case in disease. Here we find the notion deprived of its controlling sovereignty, and other powers are potent with it. Such a life is, however, defective and crippled: it merely continues, because the inadequacy of reality to the notion has not reached the point of absolute contradiction; it is still only relatively valid. Once assume that all harmony between the two sides is broken, that all genuine articulation of the members of the body and their true identity has dropped away, and life is dissolved in death. The several members are now mere appendages to each other, with no principle of Life to hold them in unsevered unity.
(β) We must add that when we stated the soul is the totality of the notion regarded as the subjective and ideal unity, the body on the other hand, as distinguished by its members, is the same totality but rather in its material aspect as the juxtaposition and sensuous accretion of all the several parts, affirming at the same time that both soul and body are posited as one in the living organism, there is no doubt something contradictory in the statement. For the ideal unity, so far from being this material juxtaposition of parts, in which each particularity possesses its independent consistency and exclusive character, is rather in direct antithesis to such external reality. That what is diametrically opposed should nevertheless be identical is obviously a contradiction in terms. The man, however, who declares the non-existence of anything from the fact that it carries in our notion of it a contradiction which implies the identity of opposed antitheses, simply excludes Life itself from the idea of existence. For the force of Life and still more the power of Spirit (mind) consists in this very movement, namely, to assert the law of contradiction inherent within them, to bear the burden thereof and to overcome it. This affirmation and resolution of the contradiction which obtains between the ideal unity and material juxtaposition of the members, constitutes the appointed process of life itself. And Life is simply process. And this process of life includes an activity which has two distinct functions. On the one hand it has continually to affirm the material existence of the physical distinctions[210] among the members of the organism thus determined; on the other, just in proportion as such distinctions grow obdurate in their independent particularity, and tend to remain fixed in absolute separation from each other, it has to make good once more that universal ideality, which is the principle of their life. This is the idealism of Life's process. Philosophy is not the only idealism; far from it. Nature herself in her domain of actuality creates in the life-process just that which the philosophy of idealism completes in the world of contemplative thought. Only where we have these two aspects of one activity, that is, the constant realization of the corporeal definition of the organism no less than the synthetic affirmation of such material presentment in the ideal unity, which it is as one with the notion[211], then and only then we have the completed process of Life, whose more primitive forms[212], however, this is not the place to discuss. Through this unity of Life's energy in both its branches all the members of the organism are up held in their integrity, and continually flushed anew with the ideality of their life. This ideality is furthermore declared by the organic parts in the fundamental law of their being, that this unity of Life is not so much an accidental quality as, on the contrary, the substance of it. In this alone they are able to preserve their specific character. This it is which precisely constitutes the difference between the part of a mere conglomerate and the member of an organism. The particular parts of a house, for example, the stones, windows, and so forth, remain just what they are, whether they form part of the structure of a house, or whether they do not. Their relationship to one another is quite indifferent, and the conceptual notion remains in their case a purely external form, which possesses no life in these parts raising them to the ideality of a subjective unity.
The members of an organism have, it is true, an external reality, but for all that it is the notion of Life which constitutes the inward, nay, the characteristic being of such reality, a reality which is not expressed through one external form uniting them, but in the ideal coherence of their parts in one living whole. For this reason the limbs have no such reality as belongs to the stones of a building, or the planets, moon, and comets in the solar system. Their reality is one wholly within the content of the organism, and all appearance to the contrary is, as such, ideally imposed on them. Dissever the hand from the body and it loses its independent existence as a member of the organism which made it what it was. Its activity, form, and colour, all that constitutes it, is at once changed; it enters the process of corruption, and ultimately ceases to exist[213]. Consistent character it only possesses as a limb of organic life, reality only in constant reunion with that ideal unity which sustains it. And that is just the superior mode of reality which the living organism possesses in itself. The real or positive is for ever being set up as both the negation of itself and withal the ideal resumption of itself, such ideality constituting, in fact, both the maintenance and specific character of the mode under which each of the separate parts of the bodily presence are associated together.
(γ) The reality, then, which the Idea wins for itself in the life of Nature is reality as a phenomenal process. Such an appearance stated in its simplest terms is this, that a reality exists, but its potential being[214] is not immediately in its possession, rather it is at the same time negatively affirmed[215] in the particular form that belongs to it. The negation of the immediately external and particular members of a body is not only a negative relative relation as the activity of the inherent idealization[216], but is as such a positive realization[217].
Hitherto we have considered the particular objects of the real as positive in their self-exclusive particularity. This independence, however, is negated in the living object, and the ideal unity asserted within the bodily organism is alone found to assert over itself the full force of positive determination. Such a positive ideality in the principle of negation it asserts is the soul. On the appearance of the soul in the body we have at once such an affirmative presence as the one indicated. The soul not merely asserts itself as a power against the subdivision of the bodily members, it is their plastic creator[218], which preserves as inward and ideal that which is externally minted in the shape of physical members. And consequently it is this very positive and ideal inward[219] which appears in the outer structure; in other words, the external, so far as it is a mere external, is a mere abstraction, a mere aspect that is untrue for the whole. In organic life the external we are confronted with is an externality through which the inward is made visible. The outward, that is to say, declares itself in its potential nature as that inward, which is its notion. Further to this notion appertains the reality in which it as notion is made visible. Inasmuch, however, as in the objective world the notion, strictly as such, is the principle of subjective life and self-determined life becoming explicit in its own objective reality[220], life exists only as a living thing, an individual subject. It is only with life thus concentrated to a point that we find this negating centrum of unity. And it is negative in this sense that the ideal explicitly self-unified totality[221] can only now stand forth in its reality by virtue of this principle of ideality being asserted through the differentiation of its positive presence, together with which the ideal unity of such totality is at the same time incorporated. It is of the greatest importance to make clear this aspect of the principle of subjectivity. It is only as the single living thing thus unified by such a principle that life is actually present.
If we inquire further in what manner the Idea is manifested within the actual life of such living individuals our survey will be as follows: first, this principle of Life will be realized as the totality of an organism possessing bodily shape; secondly, this physical shape is not presented as a rigid product[222], but as a continous process of ideal generation, in which a living soul asserts itself. Thirdly, the changes and determinations through which this totality passes are not imposed externally to it, but are changes of form which are evolved from its inherent nature, imposed on itself and for itself, in a process wherein it stands self-determined as the subjective unity no less than the ultimate end of its being.
This free self-subsistence of the subjective principle of life is especially exemplified in the spontaneous motion of a living organism. The inanimate bodies of inorganic Nature are fettered to the conditions of Space, which limits them to one place, or they are only moved from it by external forces. The motion, in short, does not originate in themselves; and, when it is visible upon them, it appears as an energy which is foreign to them, to remove which the only force they exert is that of reaction. And if the motion of the planets with similar phenomena appear to be otherwise produced, such are at least wholly fettered by natural laws and their abstract necessity. The living animal, on the contrary, in its freedom of motion, negatives this enforced limitation to one spot by virtue of its own activity. It is through such self-determination the continuous liberation of itself from the material isolation. And for the same reason it is in this freedom of motion, if only in a subordinate degree, the release of itself from the former abstractness referable to the particular modes of motion, their direction and their speed. Under a yet closer view, moreover, the animal, regarded by itself in its organism, presents the same sensuous matter that is moved; and here, too, life is as before a freedom of motion within this organic reality, evidenced in the flow of blood and the movement of the limbs.
Motion, however, is not the only expression of animated life. The free tones of the voice of animals, which are unknown in the inorganic world, where bodies merely roar and clatter through the blow of objects external to them, these already present to us the higher expression of animated subjectivity. The most intimate and vital expression of such ideal activity is, however, brought before us when we find the living individual able to concentrate itself as individuality over against the objective world, while at the same time it appropriates and transfigures that world for its own. And this is accomplished in part through observation by means of vision, and partly for practical purposes, in so far as such an individual brings the outer world into subjection to himself, utilizes the same, assimilates it as a means of nourishment, and in this manner continually reproduces his individuality in that objective alterum. Such a process, of course, as it ascends through stronger organisms, assumes more and more emphatic degrees of unsatisfied desire, assimilation, satisfaction, or satiety.