[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

What is organic does not produce something, it merely conserves itself, or what is produced is as much there
already as produced.
We must elucidate this principle more fully, both as it is in itself and as it is for the instinct of reason, in order
to see how reason finds itself there, but does not know itself in what it finds. The concept of purpose, then,
which rational observation has reached, is, while reason has apprehended it in consciousness, given to reason
as something actually real as well; it is not merely an external relation of the actual, but its inner being. This
actual, which is itself a purpose, is related purposively to an other, i.e. its relation is a contingent one with
respect to what both are immediately; prima facie they are both self-subsistent and indifferent to one another.
The real nature of their relation, however, is something different from what they thus appear to be, and its
effect has another meaning than sense-perception directly finds. The necessity inherent in the process is
concealed, and comes out at the end, but in such a way that this very end shows it to have been also the first.
The end, however, shows this priority of itself by the fact that nothing comes out of the alteration the act
produced, but what was there already. Or, again, if we start from what is first, this, in coming to the end or
the result of its act, merely returns to itself, and, just by so doing, it demonstrates itself to be that which has
itself as its end, that is to say, qua first it has already returned to itself, or is self-contained, is in and for itself.
What, then, it arrives at by the process of its action is itself; and its arriving merely at itself means feeling
itself, is its self-feeling. Thus we have here, no doubt, the distinction between what it is and what it seeks;
but this is merely the semblance of a distinction, and consequently it is a notion in its very nature.
This is exactly, however, the way self-consciousness is constituted. It distinguishes itself in like manner from
itself, without any distinction being thereby established. Hence it is that it finds in observation of organic
nature nothing else than this kind of reality; it finds itself in the form of a thing, as a life, and yet, between
what it is itself and what it has found, draws a distinction which is, however, no distinction. Just as the
instinct of an animal is to seek and consume food, but thereby elicits nothing except itself; similarly too the
instinct of reason in its search merely finds reason itself. An animal ends with self-feeling. The instinct of
reason, on the other hand, is at the same time, self-consciousness. But because it is merely instinct, it is put
on one side as against consciousness, and in the latter finds its opposite. Its satisfaction is, therefore, broken
in two by this opposite; it finds itself, viz. the purpose, and also finds this purpose in the shape of a thing. But
the purpose is seen to lie, in the first instance, apart from the thing presenting itself as a purpose. In the
second place, this purpose qua purpose is at the same time objective; it is taken to fall, there. fore, not within
the observing consciousness, but within another intelligence.
a (2). OBSERVATION OF ORGANIC NATURE 91
 THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND
Looked at more closely, this character lies also just as much in the notion of the thing--that of being in itself
purpose. It preserves itself; this means at one and the same time it is its nature to conceal the controlling
necessity and to present that necessity in the form of a contingent relation. For its freedom, its being on its
own account, means just that it behaves towards its necessary condition as something indifferent. It thus
presents itself as if it were something whose notion falls apart from its existence. In this way reason is
compelled to look on its own proper notion as falling outside it, to look at it as a thing, as that towards which
it is indifferent, and which in consequence is reciprocally indifferent towards it [reason] and towards its own
notion. Qua instinct it continues to remain within this state of being, this condition of indifference; and the
thing expressing the notion remains for it something other than this notion, and the notion other than the
thing. Thus for reason the thing organized is only per se a purpose in the sense that the necessity, which is
presented as concealed within the action of the thing--for the active agency there takes up the attitude of
being indifferent and independent--falls outside the organism itself.
Since, however, the organic qua purpose per se can not behave in any other way than as organic, the fact of
its being per se a purpose is also apparent and sensibly present, and as such it is observed. What is organic
shows itself when observed to be something self-preserving, returning and returned into itself. But in this
state of being, observation does not recognize the concept of purpose, or does not know that the notion of
purpose is not in an intelligence anywhere else, but just exists here and in the form of a thing. Observation
makes a distinction between the concept of purpose and self-existence and self-preservation, which is not a
distinction at all. That it is no distinction is something of which it is not aware; what it is aware of is an
activity which appears contingent and indifferent towards what is brought about by that activity, and towards
the unity which is all the while the principle connecting both; that activity and this purpose are taken to fall
asunder.
On this view the special function of the organic is the inner operating activity lying between its first and last
stage, so far as this activity implies the character of singleness. So far, however, as the activity has the
character of universality, and the active agent is equated with what is the outcome of its operation, this
purposive activity as such would not belong to organic beings. That single activity, which is merely a means,
comes, owing to its individual form, to be determined by an entirely individual or contingent necessity. What
an organic being does for the preservation of itself as an individual, or of itself qua genus, is, therefore, quite
lawless as regards this immediate content: for notion and universal fall outside it. Its activity would
accordingly be empty functioning without any content in it; it would not even be the functioning of a
machine, for this has a purpose and its activity in consequence a definite content. If it were deserted in this
way by the universal, it would be an activity of a mere being qua being, i.e. would be an activity like that of
an acid or a base, not forthwith reflected into itself-a function which could not be cut off from its immediate
existence, nor give up this existence (which gets lost in the relation to its opposite), but could preserve itself.
The kind of being whose functioning is here under consideration is, however, set down as a thing preserving
itself in its relation to its opposite. The activity as such is nothing but the bare insubstantial form of its
independent existence on its own account; and the purpose of the activity, its substances--substance, which
is not simply a determinate being, but the universal-does not fall outside the activity. It is an activity
reverting into itself by its own nature, and is not turned back into itself by any alien, external agency.
This union of universality and activity, however, is not a matter for this attitude of observation, because that
unity is essentially the inner movement of what is organic, and can only be apprehended conceptually.
Observation, however, seeks the moments in the form of existence and duration; and because the organic
whole consists essentially in not containing the moments in that form, and in not letting them be found within [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]