KANT AND HEGEL 95 



been shown to be defective and irreconcilable 

 with experience in relation to the phenomena 

 of life. This part of our experience implies 

 the conception of life. By a process of 

 abstraction from the distinctive facts of life 

 we can, it is true, regard organisms as simply 

 so much matter, with so much energy 

 passing through them. If they had turned 

 out to be capable of interpretation as 

 mechanisms this would have been no ab 

 straction, but a correct way of regarding 

 them. But since they are what they are, 

 their structure must be regarded as living 

 structure, and their activity as living activ 

 ity, both structure and activity being the 

 expression of an organic and indivisible 

 whole. The ideas of matter and energy are 

 nothing but ideas, and in the case of life 

 these ideas are united and transformed in the 

 idea of the living organism. 



This leads us back to the philosophical 

 conclusions of Kant and his successors. For 

 Kant the categories or general conceptions 

 under which our experience is ordered were 

 so many separate conceptions unrelated to 

 one another. We might roughly compare 



