1.  Tasting, smelling, feeling, hearing, and seeing may sound like all thoughtless consciousness means when it declares observation and the process of experience to be the source of truth.  In its eagerness to recommend tasting, smelling, etc. it forgets to mention what it also means, namely the object of those senses it has essentially pre-determined for itself and which is at least as important to it as all that sensing.  ²It will also readily admit that it is not so exclusively focused on perception as such and that, for instance, the perception of this penknife here lying beside my snuffbox would not count as an observation.  ³What is perceived should at least have the significance of a universal, not a sensuous this.

2.  At first then, this universal just remains identical to itself, its motion just the uniform repetition of the same action.  ²Finding only universality – that abstract mine – in the object, consciousness here must take charge of the object's own motion itself.  Consciousness is not yet understanding of the object, so it must at least be the memory of it, expressing in universal terms what in actual reality is only given in the singular.  ³All we have here is mere description: a superficial extraction from singularity together with the equally superficial form of universality into which sensuousness is simply received without having become something itself inherently universal.  Merely describing things does not capture the motion in the object; movement here lies only in the describing.  ⁴Once described, the object is no longer interesting; once one is described, another must be found and the search never ceases for the describing may not end.  ⁵If new whole things are not so easy to find, then ones already found must be taken up again and broken down, dismantled in the search for new aspects of thinghood within them.  ⁶This restless, turbulent instinct can never run out of material; but only the very lucky can find a new genus of major importance or a new planet, which, in this case, even as an individual would still have the nature of a universal.  ⁷But the clear limits of what genus and species are that make it easy to distinguish elephant, acorn, gold, etc. soon give way to the many levels and infinite particularization within the chaos of animals and plants, of rock types and of those metals and ores only obtained by violence and craft.  ⁸This realm of the universal that lacks definition opens up an inexhaustible supply of material for observation and description, because in it particularization approaches singularization again, here and there descending into it completely.  ⁹In this vast field, instead of immeasurable wealth, at the limits of the universal it may well only find the barriers of nature and of its own action.  It can no longer know if what appears to be in itself is not in fact merely transient.  Something bearing all the hallmarks of a confused, unripe, weak form barely developing itself beyond a condition lacking elemental definition cannot even make any claim to be described.

3.  It might appear that all this searching and describing is only concerned with the things themselves.  A closer look shows that it does not proceed within sense-perception; rather, what makes the things recognizable is much more important to it than the rest of its range of sensuous properties.  The thing can't do without these, but consciousness can.  ²It's precisely by distinguishing between essential and inessential that the concept lifts itself out of sensuous dispersion; which also amounts to a declaration by the pursuit of knowledge that it is at least as essentially concerned with itself as with the things.  ³With two essential issues now, consciousness descends into dithering over whether what is essential and necessary in knowledge is also essential and necessary in the things themselves.  ⁴Characteristics should help knowledge to distinguish the things from each other; but they should also ensure that what is inessential in the things is not recognized.  What knowledge seeks is that by means of which the things pull themselves out of the general continuity of being as such, separating themselves off from the others and are for themselves.  ⁵These features should not only have an essential relation to the process of knowledge, but also to the essential defining features of the things themselves; their artificial system should accord with the system of nature and express only this.  ⁶All this follows necessarily from the concept of reason.  The instinct of reason – for reason behaves as no more than that in this observation – has attained such unity in its systems too.  Its objects are so constituted in this unity that they have an actual essence to them, that being for itself is inherent to them; they are not mere accidents of time or place.  ⁷Claws and teeth have been used as distinguishing characteristics of animals, for not only does science use them to distinguish one animal from another, the animals use them to separate themselves too; each uses these weapons to secure itself for itself and separate itself from the universal.  ⁸Plants, in contrast, don't make it to being for itself, only touching on the borderline to individuality.  Displaying the appearance of sexual differentiation at this line, that gets them accepted for classification in these terms.  ⁹Anything below this level can't distinguish itself from others, getting lost in mere contrast with them.  ¹⁰Being at rest and being in relation come into conflict with each other.  The thing is something different within a relation than when it is just being, whereas the individual is precisely what maintains itself within a relation to another.  ¹¹Anything that can't do this, chemically becoming something different from what it is empirically, confuses science driving it into conflict over whether it should hold to the one side or to the other, since the thing is not self-identical, it does not remain the same, and in relation to it the two sides are quite separate.

4.  In such systems of universal self-identity, self-identity means being that in science as well as in the things themselves.  ²Unfortunately, the spread of stable definition features, each of which calmly describes the sequence of its progress and gains space to establish itself, essentially also turns into its opposite, into the confusion of these features.  For the characteristic, the universally determinate feature, is the unity of opposites, of determinate feature and universal in itself, so it must separate itself into these opposed terms.  ³If from one side the determinate feature subjugates the universal containing its essence, then on the other side, the universal gets the upper hand, pushes the feature to its limit and there mixes up its differences and essential aspects.  ⁴Observation, which held them neatly apart believing it had something hard and fast in both, now sees one principle extend itself over the other; it sees transitions and confusions emerging with things coming together which it took to be completely separate, others doing the opposite, things separating which it assumed were bound together.   Holding fast to static being in its persistent self-identity, it finds itself tormented precisely here in its most universal definition features, in the essential characteristics of e.g. animal or plant, with instances that deprive it of all definition, silencing the universality to which it raised itself, throwing it back into thoughtless observing and describing.

5.  Observation that restricts itself to the simple, to sensuous dispersal limited by the universal, finds its principle confused in its own object, because the nature of the determinate drives it into losing itself in its opposite.  Reason must therefore advance from the passive determinate feature, which only appears to persist, to observing it as it is in truth, i.e. in relating to its opposite.  ²What are called essential characteristics are definition features at rest, which, when expressed in their simplicity and grasped as such, do not represent what their nature makes of them, namely vanishing moments of a motion taking itself back into itself.  ³Now the reason instinct comes to the point where it seeks the definition feature according to its nature of essentially not being for itself but of transiting into its antithesis, which means it seeks its law and concept.  It seeks them, of course, as given realities, but ones that will in fact vanish before the reason instinct, while the sides of the law become pure moments or abstractions such that the law emerges clearly in the nature of the concept that has abolished within itself sensuous reality's indifferent persistence.

6.  As far as observing consciousness is concerned, the truth of the law lies in experience in the same way that sensuous being is for it, for consciousness, not in and for itself as such.  ²If, however, the law does not have its truth in the concept, then it is accidental, not a necessity and not really a law at all.  ³Being essentially concept is no obstacle to the law's accessibility to observation; that's precisely what gives it necessary existence and makes it available to observation.  ⁴The universal, in the sense of the universality of reason, is also universal in the sense implicit in the concept with presence and actual reality for consciousness.  The concept appears in the mode of thinghood, sensuous being, but without thereby losing its nature and falling back down into inert persistence, indifferent sequencing.  ⁵What is universally valid is also universally effective; what should be is also in fact, while what merely should be without being has no truth.  ⁶It is perfectly correct in its position for the instinct of reason to remain steadfast here and not to let itself be driven into error by figments of thought, which are merely supposed to be and have truth only as 'shoulds' even if they have never been encountered in any experience, nor by hypotheses or any other invisibles of a perennial 'should'.  For reason is precisely the certainty of having reality and what is not an essence with a self for consciousness, i.e., what does not appear, is nothing at all for it.

7.  For the consciousness that stays with observation, the result that the truth of law is essentially reality falls again into antithesis with the concept and with what is universal in itself.  Anything like its law is not an essence of reason; it fancies having something alien in that.  ²In fact, observing consciousness refutes its own opinion here in the action in which it declines to take its universality in the sense that all individual sensuous things must have shown it the law in its appearance in order to be able to assert the law's truth.  ³When stones are lifted off the ground and then released, they fall and it's certainly not necessary for this experiment to be made with all stones.  It may claim that this must at least have been done with very many, from which it can then be concluded for the rest with great probability or, indeed, with every right according to the principle of analogy.  ⁴In fact, however, analogy does not grant that 'every right' at all.  Indeed, its nature is such that it refutes itself so often that the only conclusion to be drawn from analogy is that analogy allows no conclusion to be drawn.  ⁵The probability, which is what the result would be reduced to, loses all distinction of greater and lesser when confronted with the truth; it can be as great as it likes, but in comparison to the truth it is nothing.  ⁶The instinct of reason does, however, accept such laws as true.  When it comes to consider their necessity and doesn't find it in them, then it falls into this distinction, reduces the truth of the matter itself [Preface §1.3, §3.3 and §4.2; and §47.7 below] to probability in order to indicate the incomplete manner in which truth is available to consciousness here, which has not yet achieved insight into the pure concept.  Universality is only present here as simple, immediate universality.  ⁷Still, it is precisely because of that universality that law has truth for consciousness.  Stones fall.  This is true for consciousness because to it the stone has weight, i.e. because the stone has in its weight in and for itself that essential relation to the earth which manifests as the fall.  ⁸In the experience, then, consciousness has the being of the law, but it also has the law as concept and it is only the combination of the two that makes the law true to consciousness.  It stands as law precisely because it presents itself in appearance while remaining inherently concept.

8.  The law is simultaneously in itself concept, so, without even knowing it wants to, in this consciousness the reason instinct is necessarily working on purifying the law and its moments into the concept.  ²It experiments with the law.  ³The law is impure when it first appears, covered in singular sensuous being with the concept, which constitutes its nature, immersed in empirical stuff.  ⁴In its experiments, the reason instinct is working on finding what happens under certain circumstances and then under others.  ⁵This only seems to push the law even deeper into sensuous being; in fact, the law gets lost completely in all that.  ⁶Research here has the inner significance of finding pure conditions of the law.  This amounts to saying nothing other (even if the consciousness that expresses itself in this way fancies it is saying something else) than raising the law completely into the form of the concept and destroying all links between its moments and determinate being.  ⁷Negative electricity, for example, first defined as resinous electricity and the positive variety, first defined as glass electricity, lose such associations completely in the course of the experiments becoming purely positive and negative electricity, neither of which any longer belongs to any particular kind of stuff.  Now it is no longer possible to speak of bodies being either positively or negatively electric.  ⁸In the same way, the relation between acid and base and their motion with respect to each other constitutes a law in which these opposites appear as bodies.  ⁹It's just that as separated things they have no reality.  The violence that rips them apart from each other cannot hinder them from entering immediately into a process again, for they are just this relation.  ¹⁰They cannot exist on their own like a tooth or a claw to be exhibited in a glass case.  ¹¹Their essence is immediately to transit into a neutral product and this makes their being something implicitly overcome, a universal; indeed, acid and base are only true as universals.  ¹²Glass and resin can be just as well positively as negatively electric.  In the same way, acid and base are not tied to this or that reality as properties, for each thing is only relatively acid or base.  What seems to be definitely base or acid acquires in the so-called synsomaties [of the Hungarian chemist Jakob Josef Winterl (1732-1809)] the opposite value to the other.

– ¹³The result of the experiments overcomes in this way the moments, the aspects infused with spirit [Preface §33.5; III. Force and Understanding §30.5], as properties of specific things, liberating the predicates from their subjects.  ¹⁴These predicates are found only as universals, which is what they are in truth, and because of their independence they are called materials that are neither bodies nor properties.  No one calls oxygen, positive and negative electricity, heat, etc. bodies.

9.  Material here is not a given thing, but being as universal in the mode of the concept.  ²Reason, which is still instinct here, makes this correct distinction without being aware that in testing the law in all sensuous being, it thereby overcomes the law's merely sensuous being.  Further, by grasping the law's moments as materials, their essential character becomes the universal for the law and is expressed as a kind of non-sensuous sensuousness, as something without body and yet still objective being.

10.  We must now look at what turn its result takes for the instinct of reason and what new pattern of its observation emerges with that.  ²As the truth of this experimental consciousness we see the pure law, liberated from sensuous being; we see it as concept, present in sensuous being, but independent and moving without ties, immersed in it but free of it as simple concept.  ³This, in truth the result and essence, emerges itself for this consciousness, but as object.  Thus, appearing not to be a result at all for this consciousness, without the relation to the motion preceding it, it emerges as a special kind of object and consciousness' relation to this is a new and different kind of observation.

11.  Such an object to which process in the simplicity of the concept is inherent is the organic.  ²It is this absolute flux in which any definition feature that would make it solely for another is dissolved.  ³Definition is the essence of the inorganic thing, which is why it needs another thing to complete the moments of the concept and consequently gets lost when it enters into motion.  In contrast, all definition features of organic being opening it up to others are bound under simple organic unity; none would be essential that would relate to another freely.  Thus organism sustains itself within its own relations.

12.  It follows from this that the reason instinct now initially turns to the observation of a law with the terms organic and inorganic nature in their relation to one another.  ²The inorganic is for organic nature the freedom of unfettered elements that contrasts markedly with its own simple concept.  Individual nature breaks down into these while simultaneously breaking out of their contintuity and asserting itself for itself.  ³Air, water, earth, zones and climate are such universal elements constituting the indeterminate simple essence of the individualities in which they are simultaneously reflected into themselves.  ⁴Individuality is not simply in and for itself and neither is the elemental; rather, in the independent freedom in which they confront each other for observation, while they relate to each other as essential relations, they only do so with that independence and indifference of each against the other clearly dominant and only partially transiting into abstraction.  ⁵Here we have law as the relation of an element to the formation of the organic so constituted that at one point in time it stands opposed to elemental being and at another it represents that elemental being in its own organic reflection.  ⁶Unfortunately, laws like the one about the animals of the air having the constitution of birds, those of the water, that of fishes, that northern animals have dense fur and so on, such laws exhibit a poverty of content that fails to do justice to the diversity of the organic.  ⁷The organic in its freedom is perfectly capable of depriving such elements of their forms, offering exceptions everywhere to such laws, or rules, or whatever they are called.  Moreover, they remain in those objects to which they apply so superficial that even the expression of their necessity cannot be any less superficial, amounting to no more than some sort of great influence; although you never really know quite what belongs to this influence and what not.  ⁸Such relations of the organic to the elemental are not really to be called laws at all; for, as indicated above, such a relation, given its content, comes nowhere near exhausting the range of the organic.  But it is also true that the moments of such relations remain indifferent to each other, expressing no necessity.  ⁹In the concept of the acid lies the concept of the base, just as in the concept of positive electricity lies the negative variety.  No matter how much dense fur belongs together with the north, the construction of the fish with water, or that of the bird with the air, the concept of dense fur does not lie in the concept of the north, nor does that of the construction of the fish lie in that of the ocean, nor that of the bird in the concept of the air.  ¹⁰This freedom of the two sides with respect to each other is what makes it possible for land animals to exist with the essential character of birds, of fish and so on.  ¹¹Because the necessity cannot be comprehended as one internal to the essence, that necessity also ceases to have sensuous existence and can no longer be observed in reality, for it has stepped out of it.  ¹²Not finding itself in the real essence itself, it is what is called teleological relation, a relation external to the participants and hence rather the opposite of a law.  ¹³It is thought completely liberated from the necessity of nature, leaving it behind, automotive for itself, above and beyond nature.

13.  This relation of the organic to elemental nature does not express the essence of organism, but the concept of goal, purpose does.  ²Observing consciousness here does not regard it as the essence of the organic.  As fas as it is concerned, that concept falls outside of the organic and is then only external, teleological relation.  ³The definition of the organic given above makes clear, however, that the organic itself is real purpose.  Sustaining itself in its relations to others, organism is precisely that natural essence in which nature reflects itself into the concept, bringing the moments separated in necessity as a cause and an effect, an active and a suffering side, together into one.  Here, then, we have something that emerges not only as a result of necessity. In fact, that happens just as much because it has returned back into itself; and this is what makes it as much the last stage or the result as it is the first stage that starts the motion.  It is its own purpose and the process of realizing it.  ⁴The organic does not produce anything, but only maintains itself; or better, what is produced is as much already present as having been produced.

14.  We now have to discuss this concept in its own terms and as it looks to the reason instinct in order to see how this instinct finds itself therein without actually recognizing itself in what it finds.  ²Observing reason has elevated itself to the concept of goal, purpose, which is as much conscious concept for reason as it is present as something actual, of which it is indeed no mere external relation, but the essence.  ³This something actual, which is itself a purpose, relates purposefully to another and this means its relation is a contingent one given what both are immediately.  Immediately, both are independent and indifferent to each other.  ⁴The essence of their relation, however, is something other than they appear to be and their action has a different meaning than what it is immediately for sensuous perception; necessity is hidden in what happens, only revealing itself at the end, and in such a way that precisely this end shows that it was there at the beginning.  ⁵The end demonstrates its priority by showing that through the change undertaken by the action, nothing else emerges than what was already there.  ⁶When we start from the beginning, this only returns to itself in its end, in the result of its action.  In this it proves to be something that has itself for its end and hence at the beginning, it has already come back into itself.  In short, it is in and for itself.  ⁷Thus, what it arrives at through the motion of its action is itself and its feeling of self lies in the simple fact that it only arrives at itself.  ⁸The difference here between what it is and what it seeks is certainly present to it, but it's only the mere appearance of a difference, which is what makes it inherently concept.

15.  Self-consciousness is just like that.  Differentiating itself from itself in such a way that no difference results.  ²It finds nothing other in the observation of organic nature than this essence; it finds itself as a thing, as a life.  Still, it makes a distinction between what it is itself and what it has found; a distinction that is none at all.  ³Just as the instinct of the animal seeks its food and consumes it, producing nothing from that but itself, exactly in this way does the instinct of reason find in its seeking only itself.  ⁴The animal stops at the feeling of self.  ⁵The reason instinct, in contrast, is also self-consciousness; but because it is only instinct, it is set beside consciousness and against it, consciousness being its contrary.  ⁶Its satisfaction is thus split up by this opposition.  It certainly finds itself, namely the purpose, just as it also finds this purpose as a thing.  ⁷But it is first for the reason instinct that the purpose lies apart from the thing that represents itself as a purpose.  ⁸Second, this purpose, as purpose, is simultaneously objective; so for the reason instinct, it does not lie within it as consciousness, but in another understanding.

16.  Looked at more closely, the fact that it is an end in itself also lies in the concept of this thing.  ²For it sustains itself, which means that it is its nature to conceal necessity and to represent it in the form of a contingent relation.  That's because its freedom, its being for itself, is just this: to relate indifferently to what is necessary to it.  It thus represents itself as something whose concept would fall outside its own being.  ³In exactly the same way reason must regard necessity, its own concept, as lying outside of it and thus as a thing, as something to which it is indifferent, something which returns that indifference in opposition to it and which is also indifferent to its own concept.  ⁴As instinct, it remains stuck within this being, within indifference, and the thing that expresses the concept remains to it something other than that concept, the concept something other than the thing.  ⁵Hence, for reason, the organic thing is only an end in itself such that the necessity present but concealed in its action – activity within it appearing like an indifferent, given being for itself – falls outside the organism.

– ⁶Since the organic as an end in itself cannot behave in any other way than this, that end in itself, which is the organic, appears too; it is sensuously present and it will be observed as such.  ⁷Organism reveals itself as something maintaining, returning into, and already returned into itself.  ⁸But observing consciousness does not recognize the goal concept in this being; it does not see that the goal concept does not exist somewhere or other in some understanding.  It exists right here as a thing.  ⁹Observing consciousness draws a difference between the goal concept and being for itself, self-preservation, which again is no difference at all.  ¹⁰Unfortunately, it is not aware of the fact that it is not a difference.  The act of making the distinction appears to be coincidental and indifferent to what results from it.  Now the unity that combines the two, the act of drawing the distinction and the goal, falls apart for it.

17.  In this view, what belongs to the organic itself is the action falling in the middle between its first and last, to the extent it has the character of singularity to it.  ²To the extent, on the other hand, that the action has the character of universality and the active agent is identified with what it produces, purposive action as such, then this cannot be ascribed to organism.  ³The former, single action that is just a means, given its singularity, falls under the rubric of a thoroughly singular or contingent necessity.  ⁴Now, what the organic does to maintain itself as an individual or as a species is, in terms of this immediate content, completely lawless, for the universal and the concept fall outside it.  ⁵Its action would then be empty effectiveness without inherent content; it would not even be the efficiency of a machine, for this has a purpose imparting to that efficiency a definite content.  ⁶Abandoned thus by the universal, it would be only the action of a merely given being, i.e. an action not simultaneously reflected into itself, like that of an acid or a base.  Its effectiveness could not separate itself from its immediate existence nor give it up, even though it gets lost in the relation to the antithesis, but it could still maintain itself.  ⁷The being whose effectiveness is under consideration here is defined as a thing sustaining itself within its relation to its antithesis.  The activity as such is nothing other than the pure form, devoid of essence, of the being for itself of that being.  The substance of that activity, which is not mere determinate being but the universal, its purpose, does not fall outside the activity.  This activity is inherently one of returning itself into itself, not one directed back into itself by something alien.

18.  Being essentially the inner motion of the organic, this unity of universality and activity is, unfortunately, not available to this observing consciousness.  The unity can only be grasped as concept.  Observation, however, wants to find the moments in the form of being and persistence, while the organic whole is essentially something that does not have the moments within it in that form, preventing them from being found there as such; so consciousness transforms the opposition into one conforming with its view of them.

19.  The result is that organic essence appears to consciousness as a relation between two given and fixed moments in an opposition, both sides of which thus appear to be given to it in observation while also expressing in their content the opposition between organic teleology and actual reality.  Since, however, the concept as such has been destroyed in the process, this all happens in a dark and superficial manner in which thought falls to the level of the image.  ²This is why we see the former referred to under the rubric of the inside and the latter under that of the outside, with their relation giving the law that the outside is the expression of the inside.

20.  A closer look at these two and their relation to each other shows that, for one, the two terms of this law no longer sound like those of earlier laws, in which the sides appeared as independent things, each a particular body; and for another, they no longer suggest that the universal should have an existence somewhere else outside given being.  ²Instead organic essence is laid as the ground, the foundation, completely undivided as content of inside and outside, exactly the same for both.  This makes of the opposition something purely formal, whose real sides both have the same in itself for their essence.  At the same time, however, since inside and outside are also opposed realities, distinct being for observation, each appears to observation to have a content peculiar to itself.  ³Each peculiar content, since it is the same substance or organic unity, can in fact only be a distinct form of that.  This is indicated by this consciousness observing that the outside is only the expression of the inside.

– ⁴The indifferent independence of the distinct sides and within them the unity into which they vanish is the same scenario we found in teleology.

21.  Now we have to look at what forms inside and outside take in their being.  ²The inside as such must be just as much an external being with a form as the outside as such, for it is object, present as given being for observation.

22.  Inside, organic substance is the simple, integral soul, pure teleology, the universal that remains universal flux even in its division; thus, in its being it appears as the action or the motion of vanishing reality.  The outside, in contrast, is organism's being at rest opposed to that given inside.  ²The law relating inside and outside now expresses the content of the organic, once in representing universal moments or simple essential properties and then again in representing the realized essence, embodied form.  ³Those first simple essential, organic properties, if we may call them that, are sensibility, irritability and reproduction.  ⁴These properties, or the first two at least, do not appear to refer to the organic in general, just to animal organism.  ⁵Indeed, vegetable organism only expresses the simple concept of organism that does not develop its moments.  Clearly, in order to observe these moments, we must focus on the kind of organism that exhibits them in their developed existence.

23.  These moments emerge immediately from the concept of the end in itself.  ²Sensibility expresses the simple concept of organic reflection into itself, its universal flux.  Irritability represents organic elasticity, behaving reactively within reflection along with the actualization opposed to the initial intensity at rest, in which that abstract being for itself is now one being for another.  ³Reproduction is the action of this whole organism reflected into itself, its activity as end in itself, as species, in which the individual repels itself from itself, repeatedly reproducing its organic parts or the whole individual.  ⁴In the sense of self-preservation in general, reproduction expresses the formal concept of the organic, sensibility.  It is, however, the real organic concept, the whole returning into itself either as individual through the production, generation of its own individual parts or as species, through the generation of whole individuals.

24.  The other meaning of these organic elements as outside is the form that gives them presence as actual, but also universal parts or organic systems: sensibility as a nervous system; irritability as a muscle system; reproduction as a visceral system for the preservation of the individual and the species.

25.  Laws peculiar to the organic realm, then, refer to a relation of the organic moments in their double significance.  For one, as part of organic embodiment in systems and, for another, as universal flux properties running through all those systems.  ²In the expression of such a law then, for example, a determinate sensibility as a moment of the whole organism would have its expression in a precisely constructed nerve system, or else it would be linked with a specific reproduction of the organic parts of the individual or the propagation of the whole, and so on.

– ³Both sides, or terms, of such a law can be observed.  ⁴The outside, the external, is, according to its concept, being for another.  Sensibility, for instance, has its immediately realized mode in the system of sensibility; it is also objective in its externalizations as a universal property.  ⁵What's called the inside has its own outside distinct from what is called the outside of the whole.

26.  Both terms of an organic law would thus no doubt be observable, but that does not apply to the laws of the relations between them.  Observation's inadequacy here is not that it is inherently myopic and should not proceed empirically at all, but should start from the idea.  The fact is that such laws, if they were real, would have to be present, i.e. available to observation.  No, the problem is that the thinking behind laws of this kind proves to have no truth to it.

27.  We have seen that in law here the universal organic property [§23.3 above] would make itself into a thing in an organic system with its embodied copy therein, so that both would be the same essence, present once as universal moment and then again as a thing.  ²The side of the inner also turns out to be a relation of several sides, which initially suggests the notion of a law as a relationship between universal organic activities or properties.  ³Only the nature of such a property itself can determine whether such a relation is possible.  ⁴It is, however, as a universal flux, fluid.  In that sense, it is not limited in the manner of a thing, sustaining itself in the difference of an existence that is supposed to constitute its embodiment.  Sensibility goes beyond the nerve system, extending into all other systems of the organism.  It is also a universal moment that is essentially not cut off, indeed is inseparable, from reaction, irritability and reproduction.  ⁵Being reflection into itself, reaction as such is inherent to it.  ⁶However, mere being reflected into itself is passivity, dead being, not sensibility, as little as action, which is the same as reaction, without being reflected into itself is irritability.  ⁷Reflection in action or reaction, just like action or reaction in reflection, is precisely the unity that constitutes the organic; a unity synonymous with organic reproduction.  ⁸It follows from this, taking first the relation between sensibility and irritability, that in each mode of organic reality the magnitude of sensibility must be equal to that of irritability.  This implies that an organic phenomenon can be grasped and determined, or if the expression is preferred, can be explained, from the one just as well as from the other.  ⁹The same thing that one person takes for high sensibility can be taken by someone else for high irritability, and that of the same magnitude.  ¹⁰Called by some factors [e.g. by Schelling M], if this is not to be a meaningless word, it certainly expresses the fact that they are moments of the concept and thus of the real object whose essence is constituted by this concept.  That concept has both equally inherent to it so that when the object is defined by the one, it must be described as very sensitive and when defined by the other, as just as irritable.

28.  If they are distinguished in terms of necessity, then that happens according to the concept and their opposition is qualitative.  ²Now, apart from this true difference, in terms of what they might be as sides or terms of a law when distinguished as given being or in image thinking, then in this case they appear in quantitative difference.  ³With this the qualitative opposition peculiar to it enters into the realm of magnitude and laws emerge of the kind which state, for instance, that sensibility and irritability magnitudes are inversely proportional; as the one grows the other decreases; or better, taking the magnitude itself as content, that the magnitude of something increases as its smallness decreases. 

– ⁴When such a law is given a definite content, such as that the size of a hole increases with decrease in its filling, then this inverse ratio can be changed into a direct one and expressed by saying that the size of the hole stands in direct ratio to the quantity of what is removed.  This is a tautological proposition whether expressed as a direct or an inverse ratio, which in real terms amounts to no more than that a magnitude increases as it increases.  ⁵The hole and that which fills and is removed from it are qualitatively opposed.  But the reality of all that, as well as the definite magnitude in both, are one and the same; increase in size and decrease in smallness are the same and their meaningless antithesis runs into a tautology.  In just this way, the organic moments are equally inseparable in their reality and in their magnitudes, the magnitudes of those real things; the one only decreases with the other and increases again only with that, for the one only has meaning if and when the other is present.  This all comes down to the same thing whether one dubs an organic phenomenon irritability or sensibility; and that doesn't change when their magnitudes are brought into the discussion.  ⁶It's about as trivial as designating the increase of a hole as the growth of emptiness or as the growth of what is taken away from the filling.  ⁷Similarly, a number, e.g. three, remains the same size whether I take it as positive or negative; and when I increase the three to four, then the positive becomes four just like the negative number.  In the same way the south pole of a magnet is just as strong as its north pole, a positive electricity is exactly as strong as its negative, and an acid as strong as the base on which it acts.

– ⁸A magnitude like that three or the magnet, etc. is an organic existence, something that is increased and decreased.  When the number is increased, both its factors are increased.  The same can be said for the two poles of the magnet or the two electricities, when they are boosted.

– ⁹That the two factors are not distinct in terms of intension and extension – that neither can decrease in extension but increase in intension while the other does the reverse with its intention decreasing and its extension increasing – comes under the same concept of empty antithesis.  Real intension is just as great as extension and conversely.

29.  Central to this whole endeavour of developing laws is that everything starts with irritability and sensibility constituting the determinate organic opposition.  This content gets lost, however, when the opposition moves into the formal one of the increase and decrease of magnitudes or differences of intension and extension, an opposition that has no longer anything to do with the nature of sensibility and irritability and no longer expresses them.  ²This is why such empty games of formulating laws is not bound to the organic moments and can be conducted everywhere with anything that comes to hand based, as it is, on ignorance of the logical nature of these oppositions.

30.  Once, finally, instead of sensibility or irritability, reproduction is brought into a relation with one or the other of these, the whole motivation for this kind of development of law falls away.  For reproduction does not stand to those moments in opposition, as they do to each other; and since the development of law here is based on that opposition, now even the appearance that anything of the sort we saw above is happening completely fades away.

31.  The development of law we have been considering contains the differences in the organism in their meaning as moments of its concept and should really be an a priori law formulation.  ²Essential to this endeavour is the thought that the differences have the significance of being present and the merely observing consciousness must stick to their existence.  ³Organic reality has such an opposition necessarily within it, as expressed by its concept, which can be determined as irritability and sensibility just as both again appear distinct from reproduction.

– ⁴The externality in which the moments of the organic concept are considered here is the inside's own immediate externality, not the outside as outside of the whole, its embodied form.  The inside will now be considered in relation to that outside.

32.  Sensibility, irritability and reproduction sink to the level of common properties when the opposition between the moments is grasped as it is in existence, properties that are universals quite as mutually indifferent as are specific gravity, colour, hardness and so on.  ²In this sense it can certainly be observed that one organic being is more sensitive, more irritable, or has greater power of reproduction than another.  Sensibility can differ in one species from another; one behaves differently in response to particular stimuli to another.  The horse reacts differently to oats than to hay and then again the dog differently to both and so on.  Similarly, it can be observed that one body is harder than another and so on.

– ³In fact, comparing and relating these sensuous properties – hardness, colour, etc.; the phenomena of sensitivity to oats, irritability to burdens, the number and kind of offspring – to each other essentially resists formulation into law.  ⁴For the definiteness of their sensuous being consists precisely in the fact that they exist in complete indifference to each other.  They exhibit rather the freedom of nature disconnected from the concept than the unity of a relation, rather the irrational running up and down the scale of contingent magnitude between the moments of the concept than the moments themselves.

33.  The other side, where the simple moments of the organic concept are compared with the moments of structuring would be the first to give the genuine law expressing the true outside as imprint of the inside.

– ²Now those simple moments of the organic concept are pervasive flux properties, so they don't have such a separated real expression in the organic thing like what is called a singular system of embodied form.  ³If the abstract idea of the organism is only truly expressed in those three moments because they are not static, but moments of the concept and the motion, then in its structuring, in contrast, the organism is not comprised in those three definite systems in the way anatomy takes its objects apart.  ⁴If such systems are found in reality and legitimated through the process of discovery, then it must be remembered that anatomy presents not just three such systems, but many more. 

– ⁵Besides, the sensitive system must mean something completely different from what is called the nervous system.  The irritable system must mean something distinct from the muscle system.  The reproductive system must be something other than the lower abdominal mechanism of reproduction.  ⁶In the structural systems as such, the organism is grasped according to the abstract side of dead existence, its moments belong to anatomy and to the corpse, not to the process of knowledge and the living organism.  ⁷They have rather ceased to be as such parts, for they cease to be processes.  ⁸Since organism's being is essentially universality or reflection into itself, the being of its whole, just like its moments, cannot consist in an anatomical system.  Rather, the actual expression and its externalization is in fact only present as a motion running through the distinct parts of the structure.  What is torn out of the structure and fixed as an individual system is present essentially as a flux moment.  The reality of such flux moments is not what anatomy finds in it, but process, itself the only context in which the anatomical parts have any meaning.

34.  It thus emerges that the moments of the organic inside taken for themselves are not capable of functioning as terms of a law of being, because such a law would have them referring to an existence and distinct from each other, but it would not be the case that each could be asserted in the same terms instead of the other.  Neither would either of them, set to one side, have in the other its realization in a firm system.  For this last is as little something with organic truth as such as it is expression of those moments of the inside.  ²What is essential to the organic, in itself the universal, is really rather that its moments in actual reality are just as universal, pervasive processes, not that it presents a picture of the universal in an isolated thing.

35.  This is how the image of law gets completely lost in organism.  ²Law wants to grasp the opposition as sides at rest and express them as such, similarly grasping and expressing the definition that lies in their relation to each other.  ³The inside, to which appearing universality belongs, and the outside, to which the parts of embodied form at rest belong, are supposed to make up the corresponding sides of the law [§§24,25 above], but when held apart in this way they lose their organic meaning, whereas it is fundamental to the image of law here that both sides should have independent and indifferent persistence and that the relation be distributed between them as a pair of respectively corresponding definitions.  ⁴In fact, each side in organism is inherently simple universality, in which all definition features are dissolved, organism being the motion of this dissolution.

36.  Insight into the difference between this kind of law development and former forms will completely clarify its nature.

– ²Let us recall the motion of perception and of the understanding as it reflects itself into itself within perception, thereby determining its object in the process.  There the understanding does not have the relation of abstract features – universal and individual, essential and external – before it in its object.  The understanding is their transition that does not become objective to itself [II. Perception §21 M].  ³Here, in contrast, we have organic unity, the relation of those opposing features, pure transition that is itself the object.  ⁴In its simplicity, this transition is immediately universality and when that enters into the distinction whose relation the law is supposed to express, its moments are universal objects of this consciousness and the law states that the outside is the expression of the inside.  ⁵Here the understanding has grasped the thought content of law itself, whereas formerly it just went looking for laws vaguely regarding their moments as specific contents, but not as their thought content [III. Force and Understanding §18.1 ff. M]. 

– ⁶In terms of the content, laws which amount to passively taking up purely given differences into the form of universality should not be accepted here.  Only laws that also include the turbulence of the concept immediately in these differences and with that the necessity of the relation between the sides are acceptable.  ⁷It turns out that because organic unity, the object, unites infinite overcoming, absolute negation of being, with being at rest and the moments are essentially pure transition, no sides or terms as given being required for a law emerge from this.

37.  To obtain such the understanding must restrict itself to the other moment of the organic relation, to organic existence's state of being reflected into itself.  ²But this kind of being is so completely reflected into itself that no definition feature against other things remains left to it.  ³Immediate sensuous being is immediately one with definition as such expressing for that reason a qualitative difference within it, such as blue against red, acid against alkaline and so on.  ⁴But that organic being withdrawn back into itself is completely indifferent to others.  Its existence is simple universality and as such it declines the sensuous difference remaining to observation, or, what amounts to the same thing, it displays its essential definition only as the flux of merely given definition features.  ⁵Thus, as merely given, difference expresses itself precisely as indifferent difference, i.e. as magnitude.  ⁶In this, however, the concept is abolished and necessity has vanished.

– ⁷However, the flux of sensuous features, the content and filling of this indifferent being, taken together in the simplicity of an organic feature also expresses precisely that it does not have that definiteness – the immediate property – and the qualitative aspect falls directly into magnitude, as we saw above [§28.3-9].

38.  The objective grasped as organic definition thus contains the concept.  This distinguishes it from what is objective for the understanding, which behaves as pure perception in the reception of the content of its laws.  Unfortunately, however, that grasp completely falls back into the principle and mode of merely perceiving understanding, because what it accepts is used for moments of a law, imposing on it the mode of fixed definition, the form of immediate property, of appearance at rest, which then turns into magnitude finally suppressing the nature of the concept.

– ²Exchanging what is merely perceived, a sensuous feature, for something reflected into itself, an organic one, means once again it loses its value precisely because the understanding has not yet overcome the habit of formulating laws.

39.  Let's take a look at some examples to illustrate the exchange.  Something that for perception is an animal with strong muscles is now defined as animal organism with high irritability.  Something that to perception is a condition of great weakness is defined as one of high sensibility or, if it is preferred, an abnormal affection and even a potentiation of that (expressions which, instead of translating the sensuous into the concept, translate it into Latin, and bad Latin at that).  ²If an animal has strong muscles, that can be expressed by the understanding thus: the animal possesses great muscle power, just as great weakness can be expressed as low power.  ³Definition by irritability is superior to definition by force because the latter expresses indeterminate reflection into itself, while the former expresses the determinate variety, for the power peculiar to muscle tissue is precisely irritability.  Irritability is also superior to definition as strong muscle power for, as in the case of force, it includes reflection into itself.  ⁴Just as for weakness or low power, organic passivity is precisely expressed as sensibility.  ⁵But sensibility taken in this way, fixed and still bound to magnitude, as greater or lesser sensibility opposed to greater or lesser irritability, completely reduces both to the sensuous element and to the common form of a property and their relation is no longer the concept but the opposite, magnitude, into which the opposition now falls becoming a difference devoid of thought.  ⁶Even if the indeterminacy of expressions like power, strength and weakness is eliminated in all this, the result is an equally empty and indeterminate running around through oppositions of higher and lower sensibility and irritability in their rising and falling towards and away from each other.  ⁷Just as strength and weakness are completely sensuous, thoughtless features, so greater or lesser sensibility and irritability amount to nothing more than thoughtlessly received and expressed sensuous appearance.  ⁸These expressions without concept have not been replaced by the concept.  Instead we have strength and weakness pumped up with a definition feature, which, taken for itself alone certainly is based on the concept and has that for its content, but here completely loses that origin and character. 

– ⁹The form of simplicity and immediacy is crucial to the formulation of that content into one side of the law.  Magnitude is the element of difference of these definition features.  The form of simplicity and immediacy together with magnitude ensure that the essence, originally given and established as concept, remains locked in the mode of sensuous perception just as distant from the process of knowledge as when it is determined in terms of strength and weakness of force or by immediate sensuous properties.

40.  It remains now to consider what the outside, taken for itself alone, is in organism and how the opposition between its inside and outside is inherently determined within it; just as above the inside of the whole was considered in relation to its own outside [from §25.5 above].

41.  The outside, considered for itself, is embodied formation as such, the system of life articulating itself in the element of being.  At the same time, it is essentially the being of organism for another – objective essence in its being for itself.

– ²This other appears initially as its external inorganic nature.  ³As far as a law relating these two goes, we saw above [§12] that inorganic nature cannot occupy one side of a law against organism, because the latter is here simply for itself with a universal and free relation to inorganic nature.

42.  Defining the relation between these two more closely within organic structure itself, this is turned against inorganic nature on the one side, but is for itself and reflected into itself on the other side.  ²The actual, organic, living being is the midpoint, binding the being for itself of life with the outside as such, with being in itself.

– ³Now, the extreme of being for itself is the inside as infinite one that takes the moments of the structure themselves out of their persistence and context with the outside back into itself.  It is devoid of content, taking its content from the structure and appearing therein as its process.  ⁴In this extreme as simple negativity or pure singularity, organism has its absolute freedom, which secures it against being for another and against the definition features of the structure's moments making it indifferent to them too.  ⁵This freedom is at the same time freedom of the moments themselves; it's what makes it possible for them to emerge into appearance, into existence and to be grasped as such.  They are just as much liberated from each other as from the outside here and indifferent to all, for the simplicity of this freedom is being, their simple substance.  ⁶This concept, pure freedom, is one and the same life no matter how much the structure, or being for another, wanders about through its various games; it is indifferent to this stream of life no matter what kind of mill wheels that stream drives.

– ⁷Having arrived at this point, it must first be noted that this concept is not to be taken in the form of process, the development of its moments, as before when we considered the actual inside [from §21 above].  Here we have the concept in its form as simple inside constituting the pure universal side against actually living being.  It is the element of persistence of the existing members of the embodied form.  This is what we are considering here, for the essence of life lies in it as simple persistence.  ⁸Next, the being for another, the definition feature of the actual formation, is taken up into this simple universality, which is its essence, where it is a similarly simple universal non-sensuous definition feature that can only be expressed as number.

– ⁹Number is the midpoint of this pattern linking indeterminate life with actual life; simple, integral like the former and determinate like the latter.  ¹⁰What would be number in the former, in the inside, would have to be expressed by the outside according to its mode as the actual reality, lifestyle, colour and so forth in their diversity of forms, indeed as the whole multitude of differences developing in the realm of appearance.

43.  The two sides of the organic whole are inside and outside such that each has an inside and an outside of its own.  We can now compare each's inside.  The inside of the former was the concept with the turbulence of abstraction.  The outside, however, had universality at rest for its inside, which brought with it definition at rest, number.  ²The concept develops its moments in the former, the inside, which thus deceptively promises laws through the appearance of necessity in its relationship with the outside.  The latter, however, the outside, immediately renounces that prospect as number shows itself to be the definition in the one side of its laws.  ³For number is the completely passive, dead and indifferent definition element in which all motion and relation is erased, which has broken all bridges to what is living in instincts, lifestyle and other sensuous existence.

44.  This perspective on the pattern of the organic as pattern and of the inside as an inside merely of patterning or embodied form is in fact no longer a view of the organic at all.  ²For the two sides whose relation is to be determined are set up as being thoroughly indifferent to each other.  This overcomes, eliminates the reflection into itself that constitutes the essence of the organic.  ³What's really happening here is that the supposed comparison of inside and outside is transferred to inorganic nature.  The infinite concept is then only the essence concealed deep inside or, outwardly, it comes under the rubric of self-consciousness and no longer has objective presence in the organism.  ⁴We must now consider this relation between inside and outside in its own proper sphere.

45.  First, that simple singularity of an inorganic thing, the inside of the formation is specific gravity.  ²It can be observed as simple being just as well as the definition, the definiteness of number, the only definition specific gravity is capable of; it can also be found through comparison of observations and appears in this way to make up one side of a law.  ³Shape, colour, hardness, toughness and uncountably many other properties would together make up the outer side, while also having to express that definition of the inner, number, so that the one has its counterpart in the other.

46.  Negativity here is not understood as motion of process, but rather as unity brought to rest or simple, integral being for itself, so now it appears rather to be that by means of which the thing resists process, maintaining itself within itself indifferent to process.  ²But now because this simple being for itself is one indifferent at rest against others, specific gravity stands as one property beside the others and with that all necessary relation to this plurality, all lawfulness ceases.

– ³Specific gravity as this simple inside does not have difference in itself, or rather it only has inessential difference; for it is precisely its pure simplicity that overcomes, erases all essential differentiation.  ⁴This inessential difference, magnitude, must then have its counterpart, its other, in the other side, namely in the plurality of properties which is what makes it real difference here.  ⁵If this plurality is brought together into the simplicity of the opposition and determined as, say, cohesion, such that this is the for itself within otherness just as specific gravity is pure being for itself, then this cohesion is initially the pure definition characteristic asserted in the concept against the former characteristic.  The manner of formulating a law would then be that given above when we considered the relation between sensibility and irritability [§§28,29].

– ⁶Next, as the concept of being for itself within otherness, cohesion is only the abstraction of the side standing against specific gravity and has as such no existence.  ⁷Being for itself within otherness is the process in which the inorganic would have to express its being for itself as self-preservation protecting it from falling out of the process, as a moment of a product.  ⁸And precisely this is against its nature in which no purpose or universality lies.  ⁹Its process is rather the specific behaviour of how its being for itself, its specific gravity, is overcome.  ¹⁰This definite behaviour itself, in which the cohesion would be its true concept, and the determinate magnitude of its specific gravity are concepts completely indifferent to each other.  ¹¹If the type of behaviour were left completely out of the picture, so that only the image of magnitude is considered, then perhaps it would be possible to think of this feature in terms of a higher specific gravity, as a greater intensity, being more resistant to entering into the process than a lower one.  ¹²In fact the reverse is the case!  The freedom of being for itself only establishes itself by the ease with which it enters into relation with everything and sustains itself within this diversity.  ¹³That intensity without extension of the relations is an abstraction without content, for extension constitutes the existence of intensity.  ¹⁴Self-preservation of the inorganic in its relation, however, falls, as we recall, outside its nature, since it does not have the principle of motion inherent to it.  Its being is not absolute negativity and concept.

47.  Let's take a look at this other side of the inorganic, without process, just as being at rest.  Here it is common cohesion, moved to one side as a simple sensuous property confronting the moment of otherness thereby released, which now lies sundered into many indifferent properties.  In fact, cohesion is now one of them too just like specific gravity.  It is the set of properties taken together then that constitutes the other side cohesion confronts.  ²In it, however, just as in the others, number is the only definition element that not only does not express a relation and transition of these properties to each other, but is rather precisely this, that it possesses no necessary relation at all, representing the destruction of all lawfulness.  For number is the expression of definition as something inessential.  ³Thus, there is no possibility of a series of bodies, expressing the difference as a numerical difference of their specific gravities, running parallel to a series of differences of other properties, even if, to make things easier, only one or some of them are taken.  ⁴For, in fact, it could only be the entire group of them that would constitute the other side in this parallel.  ⁵The quantitative features of these diverse properties are available to observation to order these and to bind them into a whole, while on the other hand, the properties' differences emerge qualitatively.  ⁶What would now have to be designated as positive or negative in this collection – hence mutually overcoming, negating each other – indeed, the inner configuration and exposition of a formula that would be highly composite, would belong to the concept, except that the concept is explicitly excluded by the manner in which the properties found there are accepted as given being.  In this kind of being none exhibits the character of a negative against the others; rather, each is as good as the other; nor does any indicate its position in the order of the whole in any other way. 

– ⁷In a series progressing in parallel differences – the relation may be imagined as increasing simultaneously on both sides, or increasing only on one side and decreasing on the other – only the last simple expression of this composite whole is of interest, which should constitute one side of the law standing against specific gravity.  But this one side, as a given, existing result, is precisely nothing other than what has already been discussed, namely single property, such as common cohesion, against which the others, including specific gravity, are present but indifferent.  Now each can with equal justice (i.e. with equal injustice) be chosen as representative for the entire other side; any one would, like any of the others, represent – in German: vorstellen picture, image representation – the essence, but would not be the matter itself [§7.6 above and V.A.c. Observing self-consciousness etc. §5 end below].  ⁸Clearly, the attempt to find body series progressing on two simple parallel sides and expressing the essential nature of the bodies according to a law of these sides is a notion that does not really know its task nor the means by which it is to be accomplished.

48.  Above, the relation between outer and inner in the pattern that should emerge to observation was directly transferred to the inorganic sphere, but we can now determine the definition element that brings it here in greater detail.  Yet another form and aspect to this relationship will emerge from that.  ²For what in the inorganic appears to offer the possibility of such a comparison of inner and outer falls away completely in the case of the organic.  ³The inorganic inside is simple, presenting itself to perception as a merely given property, which is what makes its definition essentially magnitude and, as a given property, it appears indifferent to the outside, to the many other sensuous properties.  ⁴The being for itself of what is vital and organic does not stand to one side in this way against its outside, for it has the principle of otherness inherent to it.  ⁵If we define being for itself as simple, self-sustaining relation to itself, then its otherness is simple negativity and organic unity is the unity of self-identity relating itself to itself and pure negativity.  ⁶This unity is the inside of the organic, which makes it in itself universal: genus.  ⁷The freedom of the genus with respect to its actual reality is, however, something quite different from the freedom of specific gravity with respect to embodied form.  ⁸That of the latter is a merely given, existing freedom, a particular property beside the others.  ⁹Now, because it is given freedom, it is also just one determinate feature belonging essentially to this form, something that makes this determinate as essence.  ¹⁰The freedom of the genus, however, is a universal freedom, indifferent to this embodied form or to its reality.  ¹¹The definition appropriate to the being for itself of the inorganic thus falls in the organic under its being for itself, while in the inorganic it fell only under its being and, although for that reason there it is already only a property, the dignity of essence still falls to it, standing as it does as the simple negative in opposition to existence as being for another.  This simple negative is in its ultimate singular definition a number.  ¹²Organism, however, is a kind of singularity that is itself pure negativity, so it internally destroys the fixed definition of number appropriate to indifferent being.  ¹³To the extent that the moment of indifferent being, and in that of number, is present in organism, negativity can only be a game in it, not the essence of its vitality.

49.  Pure negativity is the principle of process.  Even if pure negativity does not fall outside the organic here, but this still does not have it as a definition feature of its essence, then instead singularity is in itself universal. Nevertheless, this pure singularity is not actual in organism, not developed in its moments as themselves abstract, universal.  ²In fact, this expression does not apply to the universality that falls back into interiority.  Between the actual reality or embodied form, i.e. self-developing singularity, and the organic universal, the genus, there emerges the determinate universal, the species.  ³The existence at which the negativity of the universal, the genus, arrives is only the developed motion of a process running through the parts of the given, existing form.  ⁴If the genus had in it the distinct parts at rest in their simplicity, such that its simple negativity were also a motion that ran immediately through universal parts just as simple – and such moments would here be actual – then organic genus would be consciousness.  ⁵Without consciousness, simple definition, as the definition of the species, is available in it in a mode free of spirit and of mind.  Actual reality starts with this.  What emerges into actual reality is not the genus as such, i.e. not the thought at all.  ⁶The genus as something actually organic is only indicated by a representative.  ⁷Number is this representative, which appears to designate the transition out of the genus into the individual form.  It also appears to give observation both sides of necessity, first as simple definition, then again as developed form, born out into complex articulation.  In fact, however, number designates the indifference and freedom of universal and particular or singular with respect to each other.  The genus, meanwhile, abandons the individual to magnitude, the difference devoid of essence, but the individual with its vitality proves itself to be just as free from this difference.  ⁸True universality as determined here is only inner essence.  As definition in the species, it is formal universality.  Now that true universality, inner essence, moves against the formal variety to the side of singularity, individuality, here giving it its vitality.  This inside is what enables it to go beyond its definition in the species.  ⁹Again, this individuality is quite distinct from the universal individual, in which universality would also have an external reality; this one falls outside vital organism.  ¹⁰That universal individual, however, as immediately the individual of natural formations, is not consciousness itself; its existence as a single organic living individual would not necessarily fall outside it if it were supposed to be consciousness.

50.  What we have here is a syllogism, in which one extreme is universal life in universal terms, genus, and the other extreme is the same thing as a singularity, a universal individual.  The midpoint is composed of both.  The former appears to project itself into the midpoint as determinate universality, species, and the latter as genuine, or single, singularity.

– ²Since this syllogism as such belongs to the side of formation, what is distinguished as inorganic nature is also comprehended within it.

51.  Now, because universal life as simple essence of the genus develops the distinctions of the concept from its side and must present them as a series of simple definition features, this is in fact a system of indifferently asserted differences, a number series.  ²Two paragraphs back [§49.7] organism in the form of singularity was set against this difference devoid of essence that didn't express or contain its vital nature.  This is worth repeating here in reference to the inorganic, in terms of its whole existence developed into the manifold of its properties.  But now it is the universal individual which is to be considered not only free from the articulation of the genus, but also as its dominant power.  ³The genus divides itself into species on the universal characteristic of number; it may also use individual features of its existence for its principle of division, e.g. bodily shape, colour and so on.  It suffers violence, however, in this otherwise peaceful activity from the side of that universal individual we call the earth.  Universal individual, the earth is universal negativity.  As such the earth asserts the differences as they exist within it against the systematizing of the genus.  These differences are quite distinct in nature from those of the genus due to the substance to which they belong.  ⁴This action of the genus turns into a very limited business, which it can only pursue within those powerful elements and which is everywhere interrupted by their unrestrained power, leaving it full of gaps and stunted.

52.  It follows from this, that in the existence of embodied form observation can only encounter reason as life as such; but this life has in its process of differentiation no inherently actual rational sequencing and articulation into members; it is not a system of patterns grounded in itself.

– ²In the syllogism of organic patterning the midpoint contains the species and its actual reality as singular individuality.  If the midpoint also had the extremes of inner universality and universal individuality within it, then in the motion of its actual reality it would have the expression and the nature of universality and would as such be self-systematizing development.  ³This is indeed how consciousness has, between universal spirited mind [VI. Spirit/Mind, VII. Religion and VIII. Absolute Knowledge] and its singularity, sensuous consciousness [I. Sense Certainty], for its midpoint the system of patterns of consciousness as the life of spirit/mind ordering itself into a whole – precisely the system that is the object of study in this book and which has world history as its objective existence.  ⁴But organic nature has no history; it falls from its universal, life, directly down into the singularity of existence.  The moments of simple definition and individual vitality united in this actual reality of the singularity of existence generate becoming only as the contingent motion in which each is active in its own parts sustaining the whole, but this activity is for itself limited to its own point, because the whole is not present in it.  The whole is not present in it because here it is not as a whole for itself.

53.  In organic nature, observing reason only gains an intuition of itself as universal life as such.  Thus, reason can only have an intuition of the development and realization of life within the framework of systems distinguished very generally, whose definition, their essence, does not lie in the organic as such, but rather in the universal individual [the earth §51.3].  Thus reasn can only observe that development in terms of the earth's differences, in sequences experimented with by the genus.

54.  The actual reality of organic life is that it lets its universality fall down immediately into the extreme of individuality without any truly autonomous mediation.  Observing consciousness thus only has the thing as meaning, sense-certainty before it; and if reason can indulge in the leisurely interest of observing this kind of meaning, it is limited to the description and narration of meanings, opinions and conceits it finds in nature.  ²This spiritless and mindless freedom of opinion will surely find starters for laws all over the place, traces of necessity, suggestions of order and sequencing, amusing and apparent connections.  ³None of this brings observation of the relation between the organic and the given, existing differences of the inorganic, i.e. elements, zones and climates, into any terms of law and necessity beyond the big influences [§12.7 above].  ⁴Thus, on the other side, where individuality is not the earth, but the one immanent to organic life, it too cannot take observation beyond clever remarks, interesting connections and friendly accommodations with the concept.  For while that one in immediate unity with the universal does constitute the genus, precisely for that reason, their simple unity is determined only as number leaving qualitative appearance out of the picture.  ⁵But those clever remarks are not knowledge of necessity, the interesting connections remain no more than interesting, no more than opinions about reason, and the individual's warm amity in referring to the concept is a childish one, especially so when it wants to be, or is supposed to be, valid in and for itself.