Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/351

 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. 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. 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. Regarded in this way, the relation is one in which the inorganic is independent, while, on the other hand, the organic is what is dependent. The former, the so-called immediate, is the unconditioned. Inorganic Nature appears complete in itself; plants, animals, men, approach it in the first instance from the outside. The earth might have continued to exist without vegetation, the vegetable kingdom without animals, the animal kingdom without men. These various forms of existence thus seem to be independent and to be there for themselves. We are in the habit of referring to this as a matter of experience. Thus there are mountains without any vegetation, without animals and men. The moon has no atmosphere, there does not go on in it any meteorological process such as supplies the conditions necessary for vegetation. It thus exists without having any vegetative nature, and so on.