Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/504

 HEGEL'S CONCEPTION OF NATUBE. 503 then illustrate by a few examples the minuter elaboration of Hegel's view. Nature falls into three great stages, each higher than the preceding, the subject of three departments of Natural Philosophy Mechanics, Physics, Organics. (1) Mechanics. In mechanics Nature is regarded in the abstract, in the simplest and vaguest form of its idea that of externality : its parts are relieved out of their total indif- ference to each other by a unity which is merely ideal or potential, not yet so realised in each of the parts as to give them character or individuality one against the other. Mechanics deals therefore with Matter, but as formless : its unity is outside it, in that simple tendency to a centre which we know by the name of gravity. This unity is but an aspiration, an unrealised ideal, a Sollen Hegel calls it. Beyond this attractiveness by virtue of which it is in per- petual self-repulsion matter has no other quality (pp. 67-70). However, matter is not that which comes first in the logical order of mechanical nature. That beginning is the complete and soulless self-indifference of nature which is Space (pp. 44 ff.). Space and Time together are abstract self-externality. They involve each other and combine to produce Motion, the soul of the world, which precipitates matter in its process, in a way which will demand a fuller attention later. Matter and the motion or fall by which it manifests the elements in its nature are the sphere of finite mechanics. There is a third sphere of mechanics, the mechanics of matter in its conception or notion, the mechanics of motion which is not, as in the case of fall, only relatively free, de- termined by the accidental distance of a body from its centre, but is free absolutely or immanent in matter itself. This is the free circling motion of the heavenly bodies round their central sun (pp. 94 ff.), the system of minor centres which maintain their individuality by their free relation to a greater centre : an image of that restraint and conservation of free individuals which in the sphere of spirit is realised in the state. 1 The special laws of motion, which are known as Kepler's laws, follow from the conception of this system as such. (2) Physics. In all the three portions of mechanical nature it is quantity and quantity only that is exhibited, and all its characters and relations are quantitative. But already in the final form, the free movement of the heavenly system, 1 Loyik, iii. (JFerke, v.), p. 197.