THEIR LIFE AND AFFINITY. 225 



phaenomeiia, conceived therefore not as permanent but as perpetually 

 changing ; and this idea of it is conveyed in the term formation, inas-- 

 much £is it signifies a thing not only formed but forming itself. We 

 know, for example, that the human body after a series of years is a 

 very dificrent thing from what it was at an earlier period ; nay, that the 

 body of the adult does not contain even a single atom of that which 

 constituted the foetus; and nevertheless, that the internal, the living 

 principle, the man, as every one's consciousness undeniably assures him, 

 is still the same, nothing being changed but the phaenomena of life, 

 among which, as we have already shown, the body is to be included. 



As it follows from the foregoing observations that life is not a single 

 isolated reality, we shall be obliged to define it generally as the constant 

 manifestation of an ideal unity through a real multiplicity, that is, the 

 manifestation of an internal principle or law through outward forms. 

 This view of the subject will indeed derive additional light from the analo- 

 gous character of that inward principle which we call soul, inasmuch 

 as this also consists not in this or that particular thought, or in the mere 

 succession of our thoughts, or anything else of the sort, but in the 

 whole spiritual life in general, that is, in the constant revelation and 

 manifestation of an internal unity — of the deepest consciousness of the 

 indi\'idual identity through an infinite variety of sensations and ideas. 



If we now cast a look on that universal nature which surrounds us, 

 the endless multiplicity of its pheenomena is indisputably manifest ; and 

 as it would be an absurdity to imagine a highest number to which 

 another number cannot be added, we can fix the limits of nature no- 

 where, either in the great or in the small, because the infinite divisibility 

 of each would lead again to infinity. These infinities are nevertheless 

 included in the comprehensiveness of the whole ; there is but one ivhole, 

 (the word has no plural form in our language,) and the idea of this 

 necessarily contains at the same time the internal multiplicity, or rather 

 infinity ; for it would be a manifest inconsistency to conceive of a real 

 -whole as a unity, while in its strict reality it implies rather the idea of an 

 infinity of individuals. Thus we find in fact the idea of life, that is, the 

 constant manifestation of unity through multiplicity, exhibited by univer- 

 sal nature ; and are therefore bound to consider nature collectively as one 

 vast and infinite life, in which, though the extinction of any one of its va-. 

 rious modifications, or the merging of a single external form of life in the 

 universal life, is possible, an absolute and proper death is inconceivable- 

 Proceeding from this general view to the consideration of single 

 beings, we perceive that all those individuals, so far as they are inte- 

 grant parts of universal nature, must partake more or less of its essentia} 

 properties, — that whatever is essential to the one must be partially re- 

 peated in the otlier. Every natural being must therefore appear, like 

 nature in general, partly as a unity (in which light only it is an indivi- 

 dual), and partly as a multiplicity, in which light it is infinitely divisi,- 



