第 7 页

rougher surfaces, for example, a breath of air, and so on, are proof of the superficiality of the

electrical process, and show how little the concrete, physical nature of the body enters into it.

Similarly, the weak coloration of the two electrical lights, and the smell and the taste of them, show

only the beginning of a physicality in the abstract self of the light in which the process is maintained.

Negativity, the suspension of the antithetical tension, is mainly a shock. The self-positing,

self-identical self remains as such and consistent in the ideal spheres of space, time, and

mechanism. Light has scarcely begun to materialise itself as warmth, and the combustion which can

arise from the "discharge" is (Berthollet, Statique chimique, part I, sect. III, not. XI) rather a

direct effect of shock than the consequences of the realisation of light as fire.

Galvanism is the electrical process made permanent; it is permanence as the contact between two

different, non-brittle bodies, which, as part of their fluid nature (the "electrical conductive potential"

of metal), their entire immediate difference towards each other, and the surface qualities of their

relationship, maintain their tension mutually. The galvanic process occurs only through this

particular specificity of bodies of a more concrete and corporeal nature, and subsequently

undergoes a transition to the chemical process.

§ 250.

The individuality of the body is the negative unity of the concept, which is not self-positing simply

as an immediate entity and an unmoved generality, but only in the mediation of the process. The

body is therefore a product, and its shape a presupposition, for which the end that it will ultimately

achieve is also presupposed. The particularisation of the body, however, does not stop at either

mere inert diversity or the opposition between different attributes and their tension within the

body's pure selfhood. Rather, since the particular attributes are only the reality of this simple

concept, the body of their soul, of light, the entire corporeality moves into tension and the process

which is the development of the individual body, a process of isolation; — the chemical process.

(c) The Process of Isolation

§ 251.

The chemical process has its products as a presupposition, and therefore begins (1) from the

immediacy of their presupposition. In accord with the concept, the particular body is immediate

insofar as its attributes or material components are unified together into a simple determination and

become equal in the simplicity of specific gravity, thickness. Metals are solid, but in terms of their

particularity become fluid and capable of maintaining a determinate difference towards each other.

§ 252.

The middle term, through which the concept with its reality unites these solid differences as the

unity of both terms and the essence of each in itself, — posits the difference of one with the

difference of the other into a unity, and therefore becomes real as the totality of their concept — is

initially opposed to the immediate solidity of the extremes as an abstract neutrality, the element of

water. The process itself is the decomposition of water into opposed moments through the

presupposed difference of the extremes; they thereby suspend their abstraction and complete

themselves as the unity of their concept.

§ 253.

The moments into which water decomposes or, what amounts to the same thing, the forms under

which it is posited, are abstract, because water itself is only a physical element and not an

individual physical body; — the chemical elements of the antithesis are oxygen and hydrogen. The

metals, however, which have been integrated in the process, also receive only an abstract

integration from that abstract middle term, a reality which is only a positing of their difference, an

oxide.

The condition of lime as an oxide lies closest to the condition of metals, due to the inner

indifference of their solid nature. But nature's inability to hold on to the specific concept also allows

individual metals to change so far in the opposite direction that their oxide immediately comes to

resemble acids. It is well known that chemistry can portray, as amalgamations at least, the metallic

components of lime and potash, but also ammonia, strontium, barytes, and indeed, even of

different soils, and thereby depict these bodies as oxides. To be sure, the chemical elements are

such abstractions that when they are in the form of gases, in which they become manifest for

themselves, they interpenetrate like light and, notwithstanding their ponderability, their materiality

and impenetrability reveal themselves here to be raised to immateriality. Furthermore, oxygen and

hydrogen have a determination so dependent upon the individuality of the body that the

components of oxygen are determined in oxides, as a base in general, and, in the opposite

direction, as an acid, just as, by contrast, the acidic determination in hydrochloric acid reveals itself

as hydrogenation.

§ 254.

In contrast to the solid indifference of the particular corporeality stands physical brittleness, the

being of particularity grasped together in the unity of selfhood (brass represents the totality, as the

unification of sulphur and metal). This brittleness is the real possibility of combustion, the reality of

which is itself the self-devouring being for itself fire, and remains an external entity. Fire mediates

the inner difference of the combustible body through the physical element of abstract negativity,

air, with a being as posited or reality, and enhances it to acidity. Air, however, decomposes in its

negative principle into this, oxygen, and a dead positive residuum, nitrogen.

§ 255.

The chemical elements are: nitrogen, the abstraction of indifference; oxygen, the element of

self-subsistent difference, the burning element; hydrogen, the element belonging to the opposition

or self-subsistent indifference, the combustible element; and carbon, as the abstraction of their

individual element.

§ 256.

(2) The two products of the abstract processes, acids and bases or alkalis, are now no longer

merely but actually diverse, and (concentrated acids and alkalis enhanced caustically) are therefore

incapable of subsisting for themselves. In a state of restlessness they suspend themselves, and are

posited as identical to their opposites. This unity, in which their concept is realised, is the neutral

body, salt.

§ 257.

(3) In salt the concrete and shaped body is the product of its process. The relation of such diverse

bodies to each other involves to some extent the more precise particularisation of the bodies, from

which "elective affinities" derive. In general, however, these processes are for themselves more

real, since the extremes occurring in them are not abstract bodies. More specifically, they are the

dissolved particles of the neutral bodies into abstractions, the processes from which they are

produced, retrogressions back to oxides and acids, and further, both immediately and in abstract

forms, back to the indifferent bases, which manifest themselves in this way as products.

Empirical chemistry deals mainly with the particularity of the products, which are then ordered

according to superficial and abstract determinations. Metals, oxygen nitrogen and many other

bodies, earth, sulphur, phosphorous appear in this order together; just as chaotically, the more

abstract and the more real processes are posited on the same level. If a scientific form is to come

from this mixture, then each product should be determined according to the level of the process

from which it results and which gives it its particular significance. It is just as essential to distinguish

the levels of the abstraction or the reality of the process. Animal and vegetable substances belong

in any case to an entirely different order, and so little of their nature can be comprehended through

the description of the chemical process that much more is destroyed than saved, and only the

course of its death is grasped. These substances, however, should serve to work against that

metaphysics dominant in both chemistry and physics, namely, the thought or empty idea of the

unchangeability of matter, its composition and subsistence in matter. We see admitted in general,

however, that chemical substances lose those attributes in combination which they demonstrate

separately. Nevertheless the idea remains that these substances are the same things with the

attributes as without, and as things with these attributes they are not only products of the process.

An important step towards simplification of the particularities in the elective affinities is the law

discovered by Richter and Guiton Morveau, which states that neutral compounds suffer no change

regarding their state of solution when they are mixed in solution and the acids exchange bases with

each other. The quantitative scale of acids and alkalis has been constructed on the basis of this

law, according to which each individual acid has a particular relation for its saturation to each

alkali; so that, however, for every other acid whose quantitative unity is only different from the

others, now the alkalis have among each other the same relation to their saturation as to the other

acids, and similarly, acids display a constant relation among each other and relative to all the

different alkali.

Since, moreover, the chemical process has its determination in the concept, the empirical

conditions of a particular form, as for example electricity, are not as fixed as sensory

determinations and not as abstract moments as is represented for example by an elective affinity.

Berthollet, in his famous work Statique chimique, has brought together and investigated the

circumstances which produce changes in the results of chemical action, results often attributed only

to the conditions of the affinity, which are taken as constant and fixedly determined laws. He says:

"The superficiality which these explanations bring into science is prominently regarded as

progress."

§ 258.

The chemical process is, to be sure, in general terms, life, for the individual body in its immediacy

is suspended and brought forth by the process, so that the concept no longer remains an inner

necessity, but becomes manifest. But the body also achieves a mere appearance, and not

objectivity. This process is finite and transient, because the individual body has immediate

individuality, and therefore a limited particularity, so that the process has immediate and contingent

conditions. Fire and differentiation are extinguished in the neutral body, and it does not break apart

sufficiently in itself to divide. Similarly, difference exists at first in indifferent independence, but

does not stand for itself in relation to the other, nor does it activate itself

Certain chemical phenomena have led chemists to apply the determination of purposiveness in

explaining them. An example is the f that an oxide is reduced to a lower degree of oxidation than

that at which it can combine with the acid working on it, and a part of it is more strongly

oxidised-,-here the self-determination of the concept lies in the realisation.

§ 259.

In the chemical process the body thus displays the transiency of its immediate individuality both in

its emergence and its passing away, and presents itself as a moment of generality. In this immediate

individuality the concept has the reality which corresponds to it, a concrete generality which

derives from particularisation, and at the same time contains in itself the conditions and moments of

the total syllogism which fall apart from each other in the immediate chemical process; — the

organism.

III

Organic Physics

A. Geological Nature - B. Vegetable Nature - C. The Animal Organism

§ 260.

The real totality of the individual body, in which its particularity is made into a product and equally

suspends itself — elevates itself in the process into the first ideality of nature, but an ideality which

is fulfilled, and as self-related negative unity has essentially attained selfhood and become

subjective. With this accomplished, the idea has entered into existence, initially as an immediate

existence, Life. This is: (a) as shape, the general image of life, the geological organism; (b) as

particular or formal subjectivity, vegetable nature; (c) as individual, concrete subjectivity, animal

nature.

A.

Geological Nature

§ 261.

The general system of individual bodies is the earth, which in the chemical process initially has its

abstract individuality in particularisation, but as the totality it has an infinite relation to itself as a

general, self-dividing process; - and is, immediately, the subject and its product. As the immediate

totality, however, presupposed by subjective totality itself the body of the earth is only the shape

of the organism.

§ 262.

The members of this organism do not contain, therefore, the generality of the process within

themselves, they are the particular individuals, and constitute a system whose forms manifest

themselves as members of the unfolding of an underlying idea, whose process of development is a

past one.

§ 263.

The powers of this process, which nature leaves behind as independent entities beyond earth, are

the connection and the position of the earth in the solar system, its solar, lunar, and cometary life,

the inclination of its axis to the orbit and the magnetic axis. Standing in closer relation to these axes

and their polarisation is the distribution of sea and land: the compact spreading of land in the north,

the division and sharp tapering of the parts towards the south, the further separation into an old