THEIR LIFE AND AFFINITY. 225 
phenomena, conceived therefore not as permanent but as perpetually 
changing ; and this idea of it is conveyed in the term formation, inas- 
much as 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 different 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 phenomena 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 
tmanifestation of an internal principle or law through outward forms, 
This view of the subject willindeed derive additional light from the analo- 
gous character of that inward principle which we call sow/, 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 
individual 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 phenomena 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 whole, 
(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- 
salnature ; 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- 
F peated in the other. 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- 
