Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/505

 504 S. ALEXANDER : there is attained by means of a totality or system of motions a unity which is beyond the mere aspiration of matter itself. In physics (pp. 127 ff.) this unity has advanced one step further, and has become a form or quality. The matter of which physics treats is individual or qualified, or has its centre within itself. The characters of the Idea becoming more definite in their externality, nature takes a further step in self-reflection, and appears as actually ideal. It is but a. little way to that highest self-reflection which exists as the human spirit turning the outer world to its own uses. And the first adumbration in nature of this higher ideality is already the counterpart of the Ego : it is Light, which is matter qualified as pure identity, the self of matter (pp. 130 ff.). Only it differs from the self of spirit because it is quite abstract, bare pellucid identity, undimmed by difference, while the Ego or person is an identity which is maintained through difference, and lives by subduing antagonism; or, as Hegel puts it, " Light is manifestation of itself, not for itself, but only for other" (p. 132). Light spreads through space, but the Ego is a point of unity. Light, then, is the first manifestation of what Hegel calls Universal Individuality, the simplest universal quality of nature. It has its negation in the Dark (p. 142), the limit against which it can differen- tiate itself from its mere identity and be seen as light. For light as such is invisible. Still more complex are the natures of the four elements, Air, Fire, Water, Earth, which with the meteorological process of the elements complete the stages of universal individuality, the abstract determina- tions of nature in the large. But physics has to deal with more concrete ideas than this : first of all with matter deter- mined in its material form, in which the form is only spatial (physics of special individuality, of which I shall speak pre- sently), and lastly with what Hegel calls total individuality, where the form is immanent and there is some approach to a truer unity. But it is still only struggling and is expressed still as a relation between two things : it is conditioned and requires another. It appears first as Magnetism, which Hegel regards as the principle upon which figure is formed a natural syllogism which holds together two sundered points (p. 246). Hence too its law, for, being notional and yet in nature and spatial, it negatives the identical, or repels it. In its highest form this unity appears as Chemical Pro- cess (pp. 360 ff), which destroys the indifference of bodies. (3) Organics. Chemism prepares the way for the final stage of Organics, where Nature first acquires the character of subject, with the power which a subject has of gathering