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336 MAEY WHITON CALKINS : philosophy, that the secret of reality is one with the secret of organic nature and there was thus an immediate need for Hegel's critical dis- cussion of this theory. He considers it in the first section of the last division of book iii., and enumerates by way of introduction the points in which the conception of life conforms with the conditions, already formulated, of absolute reality. The living organism, he points out l is not an aggregate of independent parts, but a one manifesting it- self in different members which are related to each other and to the one. In so far, it conforms to the type of the Absolute One ; and its special functions, sensibility, irritability and reproduction furnish ready ana- logies to the various forms of self-differentiation and self-relation of the Absolute. 2 The initial difficulty which confronts this theory is the necessity for indicating a precise distinction between organic and inorganic, between life and matter. 3 Neither science nor philosophy has ever succeeded in the attempt to define life except by enumerating its material constituents. Evidently, therefore, there is no definable reason for distinguishing be- tween life and inert matter. Therefore, since no one claims that ultimate reality can be stated in terms of inorganic matter, and since life is not known to be other than a form of the inorganic, the attempt to define ultimate reality as life must be abandoned. Waiving this objection, however, Hegel proceeds to a closer analysis of the conception of ultimate reality as life. It is capable of two inter- pretations : ultimate reality is either some one living organism or is the succession of such organisms not the individual, but the race, or type. The first of these hypotheses is obviously inconsistent with the con- clusion, already justified, that ultimate reality is no single individual, limited by the existence of other individuals. There is, at first sight, more likelihood that the second form of the theory is adequate. Admitting that the single organism can never be identical with ultimate reality, is it not possible that the life perpetuated through generations the life, not of the individual, but of the race, the type may be indeed, the fundamental reality ? 4 Hegel puts the question, but, with his cool and penetrating logic, he does not fail to analyse the conception of the life of the race, which Schelling, in his ardour, had uncritically assumed to be ultimate. This race, or type he asks what is it ? Simply, he answers, a plurality, an indefinitely prolonged procession of living beings. 5 And, since it has been shown already that an organic unity of related indi- viduals is not ultimate reality, the conception of ultimate reality as life of the race must be abandoned. b. Ultimate Eeality cannot be adequately conceived as finite self. From the untenable hypothesis that ultimate reality is life, Hegel turns to the conception of fundamental reality as finite consciousness. 6 This is of course a dualistic conception, for every finite self is confronted with the opposition of the external world, " the immediate world found ready to hand " 7 a world of opinions and purposes contrary to its own and a world of things which it has not made. 1 Werke, v., 243 3 seq. ; Encycl., 216 1 . 2 Werke, v., 246 seq. ; Encycl., 218 2 . 3 Encycl., 219. 4 Werke, v., 252 seq. ; Encycl, 221. 5 Werke, v., 254. 6 Werke, v., 255 2 ; Encycl., 222. 7 Encycl., 224 ; cf. Werke, v., 265 3 .