AND ITS SELF-CONSERVATION. 147 



either phase may equally be considered as action or as 

 reaction, and hence, as both action and reaction. 



Or, otherwise stated, the active can exert its action 

 upon the passive only in so far as the passive reacts upon 

 the active. And in receiving the reaction of the passive 

 the active itself proves to be necessarily also passive. 



This much, let us repeat, is already contained implic- 

 itly in the laws of motion. 



The conception of a merely passive world, then, proves 

 to be self-contradictory, just as, on the other hand, a 

 purely active world, from which passivity is excluded, 

 is seen to be impossible. We can only conclude, there- 

 fore, that a real world must involve both these charac- 

 teristics as the necessary complementary phases of its 

 very existence. 



And this amounts to the same as if we were to say: 

 The concrete totality of the world or universe is a 

 necessarily self-related totality. For, as a totality, and 

 the totality, it can indeed be related to nothing else 

 than just itself. All its relations of activity are rela- 

 tions of self-activity. As active, it can act only upon 

 itself, while as passive it can only receive its own 

 activity. 



The totality of " forces " in the universe is, there- 

 fore, from its very nature, a self -active or spontaneous 

 energy, and as such, contains within itself the principle 

 and cause of all movement. 



And yet, while this principle is involved in the 

 merely physical universe, the principle itself proves to 

 evolve, through its own activity, something more than a 

 merely physical universe ; and the something-more is pre- 

 cisely the explicit aspect of this principle of spontaneity 



