G. W. F. Hegel

“ The soul is simply the living element in the organic; it is not something apart from the body, something material, but is rather the life-force which penetrates the body. Plato accordingly called God an immortal ξῶον, that is, an eternally living being. He did not get beyond the category of life. When we grasp the fact of life in its true nature, it is seen to be one principle, one organic life of the universe, one living system. ”

“ Regarded in this fashion, the harmony which exists between the organic and the inorganic is held to be accidental. There is here no necessity to begin and ask about a unity. The presence of design is itself affirmed to be accidental. Now, here is what is really involved in this conception. What, speaking generally, we call inorganic Nature as such is thought of as having an independent existence, while the organic is attached to it in an external fashion, so that it is a mere matter of chance whether or not the organic finds the conditions of existence in what confronts it. ”

“ But since the Good has not itself the power thus to realise itself, it is necessary to postulate a third thing through which the final-end of the world will be realised. This is an absolute postulate. ”

“ Moral good belongs essentially to Man; but since his power is finite, and since the realisation of the Good in him is limited owing to the natural element attaching to him, since, in fact, he is himself the enemy of the Good, it is not within his power to realise it. The existence of God is here conceived of simply as a postulate, as something that should be, and which should have for Man subjective certainty, because the Good represents what is ultimate in his reason. ”

“ Reference to an end applies only to the determination of form. Each thing preserves itself, and is therefore not merely a means for others, but is an end itself. The quality in virtue of which a thing can be a means has reference to its form merely, and not to its matter. The conclusion, therefore, does not carry us further than the fact, that there is a forming cause; but we do not prove by this that matter also has been produced by it. The proof, says Kant, does not therefore adequately express the idea of God as the creator of matter and not merely of form. ”

“ Every animal has its own narrow range of means of sustenance, and indeed many animals are limited to a single source of sustenance, human nature having in this respect also the most general character. This fact accordingly, that there exists for every animal this outward particular condition, rouses in Man that feeling of astonishment which passes over into a sense of exalted reverence for that third something which has brought about this unity. This represents Man’s elevation to the thought of that higher existence which produces the conditions necessary for the accomplishment of its end. ”

“ Aye, if the Good is to be really moral and present, then we should have to go the length of requiring and presupposing the perpetual existence of the discord, for moral Good can only exist and can only be in so far as it is in conflict with evil. It would thus be necessary to postulate the perpetual existence of the enemy, of what is opposed to the Good. ”

“ The fact of life merely involves self-preservation in general; but living beings differ from one another in an infinite variety of ways, and this variety is the work of something other than themselves. The question is simply this, How does inorganic Nature pass over into organic Nature, and how is it possible for it to serve as a means for what is organic? We are here met by a peculiar conception of the way in which these two come together. Animals are inorganic as contrasted with men, and plants are inorganic as contrasted with animals. ”

“ In the world we perceive a harmonious working of external things, of things which exist in a relation of indifference to each other, which come into existence accidentally so far as other things are concerned, and have no essential reference to one another. Still, although things thus exist apart from each other, there is evidence of a unity in virtue of which there is an absolute conformity amongst them. ”

“ The living being develops out of the germ, and the development is the action of the limbs, the internal organs, and so on; the soul is the unity which brings this about. The truth, however, of organic and inorganic Nature here also is simply the essential relation between the two, their unity and inseparability. This unity is a third something which is neither the one nor the other. It is not found in immediate existence. The absolute determination which brings both, the organic as well as the inorganic, into unity, namely, the subject, is the organic ”

“ The one gets its means of sustenance by force, the other produces it with the help of art. This it is which we term the wisdom of God in Nature, in which we meet with that infinitely manifold arrangement in respect of the various activities and conditions necessary to the existence of all particular things. When we consider all those particular forms in which the living being shows its activity, we find that they are contingent, so to speak; that they have not been produced by the subject itself, and necessitate the existence of a cause outside of them. ”

“ It is an end which returns back into itself; and even regarded as something dependent on what is outside of it, it has the character of an end, and consequently it represents what is truly first in comparison with what has been termed the immediate, in comparison, that is, with Nature. This immediacy is merely one-sided determination, and ought to be brought down to the level of something that is merely posited. This is the true relation. Man is not an accident added on to what is first; but, on the contrary, the organic is itself what is first. ”

“ We are here certainly forced to rise to the thought of a higher determination and a higher end, when we thus lament the misfortune which has befallen so much that is of high value, and mourn its disappearance. ”

“ The mere sense-perception, however, from which we start in the Teleological Proof, does not bring us so far as this totality. It must certainly be granted that the starting-point has a smaller content than what we arrive at. In the world there is merely relative and not absolute wisdom. We must look at this more closely. We have here a syllogism. We reason from the one to the other. We start with the peculiar constitution of the world, and from this go on to conclude the existence of an active force, of something that binds together things which exist apart from each other ”

“ If we now consider what goes on in higher spheres of existence, and look at human ends, which we may regard as relatively the highest of all, we see that they are for the most part frustrated and disappear, leaving no permanent result. In Nature millions of seeds perish just when they begin to exist, and without ever being able to develop the life-force in them. The life of the largest portion of living things is based on the destruction of other living things ”

“ When we say, God has made things thus, we are making a pious observation, we are rising to God; but when we think of God we have the idea of an absolute, infinite end, and these petty ends present a sharp contrast to what we recognise as His actual nature. ”

“ But since with that transition to the religion of spirituality there is added another and essential determination, we have first to bring out its meaning in an abstract way, and direct attention to it.
Here we have the determination of freedom as such, of an activity as freedom, a working in accordance with freedom, no longer an unhindered working in accordance with power, but a working in accordance with ends. Freedom is self-determination, and what is active has self-determination implicitly as its end in so far as it spontaneously determines itself within itself. ”

“ We can see that God’s activity would in this way be a finite one. When we produce anything technical we must take the material for it from the outside. Activity is thus limited and finite. Matter is thus thought of as permanently existing for itself, as eternal. That, in virtue of which things are brought into connection with each other, represents the qualities, the form, not the permanent existence of things as such. The subsistence or permanent existence of things is their matter. ”

“ Teleological determination in this its true form, which is the form we require it to have, is found actually existing, though only in one of its aspects, in what has life, in what is organic. Life as the subject is the soul. This latter is the end, that is, it posits itself, realises itself, and thus the product is the same as the thing that produces. What has life is, however, an organism; the organs are the means. The living soul has a body in itself, and it is only in union with this that it constitutes a whole, something real. ”

“ The one exists only through the other and for the other, and all the members and component parts of men are simply means for the self-preservation of the individual which is here the end. Man, all that has life in fact, has many needs: air, nourishment, light, &c., are necessary for his sustenance. All this actually exists on its own account, and the capacity of making it minister to an end is external to it. Animals, flesh, air, and so on, which are required by Man, do not in themselves declare that they are ends, and yet the one is simply a means for the other. ”

“ The conformity to an end does not produce itself spontaneously; the active working in accordance with an end is outside of the things, and this harmony which implicitly exists and posits itself, is the force which presides over these objects, which destines them to stand to each other in the relation of things whose existence is determined by an end. ”

“ We can undoubtedly assert that Nature produces stages of which the one is always the condition of that which follows. But then, since organic life and Man thus appear on the scene in an accidental way, the question arises whether or not Man will get what is necessary. According to the idea referred to, this is equally a matter of chance, since here there is no unity having a valid existence on its own account. Aristotle gave expression to the same idea. Nature is constantly producing living things, and the point is whether or not these will be able to exist. ”

“ If, on the other hand, we start from experience, the Good, the final-end is something subjective merely, and in this case the contradiction between Man’s finite life and the Good would have to exist always. ”

“ So far as the form of what essentially constitutes the conception is concerned, we have to remark that inorganic Nature is what comes first, is what is immediate. It was in harmony with the childlike ideas of the Mosaic age that the heavens and the earth, light, and so on, should have been thought of as created first, while the organic appeared later in point of time. ”

“ The teleological activity presents here the character of something which is formally true, but which is not complete. The living being produces itself; it has the material of production in itself. Each organ excretes animal lymph which is made use of by other organs in order to reproduce themselves. The living being has the material in itself, only this is merely an abstract process. Finitude shows itself in this, that while the organs draw their nourishment from themselves they employ material for this taken from the outside. ”

“ But Nature, which is in itself inorganic, as represented, for instance, by the sun, the moon, and in general by what appears in the form of means and material, is in the first instance immediate, and exists previous to the organic. ”