A. The Living Individual.

267. (G. L. iii. 249. Enc. 218.) Three characteristics of the Living Individual are given by Hegel — Sensibility, Irritability, and Reproduction. These correspond, he says, to the Universal, the Particular, and the Individual (Das Einzelne). They are not divided off, either in the text or in the table of contents, as separate subdivisions of the category of Life, but it would seem that Hegel does regard them as such, since the third seems to be taken as a Synthesis of the other two, and to form the transition to the next category of the Life-Process. The transition from the Thesis to the Antithesis, however, is not very clear. It would seem that both are reached directly from the general idea of Life, rather than the second from the first. All three assume that there is something. outside each Organism. This naturally follows from Hegel’s view that there is a plurality of Organisms, for then each of them will have other Organisms outside it.

In the first place, then, an Organism which is related to other thin” outside it, will be affected by then), and will the unity of the receive impressions from them. By reason of teh unity of the Organism, these impressions will not only affect that part of the Organism which first receives them, but will also affect the Organism as a whole and in its unity. This affection of the whole by what happens in any part is what Hegel calls Sensibility (G. L. iii. 253. Enc. 218). (Here, as afterwards with Irritability and Reproduction, the name, like the name of Life, is only applied to the logical conception because that conception is exemplified in what is commonly called Sensibility. It does not imply that all existence has the empirical characteristic of Sensibility.)

In the second place, the Organism will in its turn affect whatever is outside it. It will do this by means of the part of its Body which is in immediate relation with the particular outside thing in question. But this part of the Body will be determined to its particular nature by the Seele, the unity of the Organism. And this action of the whole Organism, through its part, on what is outside it, is called Irritability (G. L. iii. 254. Enc. 218).

The third stage is the maintenance of the Organism as a whole, through, and by means of, its relation to what is external to it. In the Greater Logic he says that this, on its theoretical side, may be called Feeling (Gefühl) and on its “ real “ side

may be called Reproduction (Reproduktion) (G. L. iii. 254). In the Encyclopaedia only the name Reproduction is used (Enc. 218).

When Reproduction is found in a series of names which are taken from biological science, we should naturally suppose it to mean that the characteristic after which this category was named was the power possessed by living beings of producing other beings of their own species. But this is not the case. Hegel’s language, in both Logics, is clearly incompatible with this, and moreover the propagation of the species is found later on as an example of a more advanced stage of the category of Life.

The Organism, then, preserves itself in its own identity through its relation to what is outside it. Throughout this triad of the Living Individual, it is assumed that each Organism must enter into relation. with what is outside it, and that it is by means of these relations that it will maintain and express its own nature. This necessarily follows, if it is admitted that there is a plurality of Organisms, and that, consequently, every Organism must have something outside it. For the different parts of the universe cannot be unconnected, nor can their connexion be anything merely external to them. It must be a connexion in which the nature of those different parts must be expressed. This results from previous stages of the dialectic. The only illegitimate assumption is the assumption that there is a plurality of Organisms.

268. With this conception of the relation of the Organism to the outside world we reach