III. Not only is the negative manifest in the above general and abstract form, but its penetration is more specific. Everything has distinctions from others in general, but also from _its_ other. _Sweet_ is opposed not only to other properties in general, as _white_, _round_, _soft_, etc., but to _its_ other, or _sour_. So, too, white is opposed to black, soft to hard, heat to cold, etc., and in general a _positive_ thing to a _negative_ thing. In this kind of relative, the negative is more essential, for it seems to constitute the intimate nature of the opposites, so that each is reflected in the other. IV. More remarkable are the appearances of the negative in nature. The element _fire_ is a negative which destroys the form of the combustible. It reduces organic substances to inorganic elements, and is that which negates the organic. Air is another negative element. It acts upon all terrestrial elements; upon water, converting it into invisible vapor; upon metals, reducing them to earths through corrosion—eating up iron to form rust, rotting wood into mould—destructive or negative alike to the mineral and vegetable world, like fire, to which it has a speculative affinity. The grand type of all negatives in nature, such as air and fire, is _Time_, the great devourer, and archetype of all changes and movements in nature. Attraction is another appearance of the negative. It is a manifestation in some body of an essential connection with another which is not it; or rather it is an embodied self-contradiction: “that other (the sun) which is not me (the earth) is my true being.” Of course its own being is its own negation, then. Thus, too, the plant is negative to the inorganic—it assimilates it; the animal is negative to the vegetable world. As we approach these higher forms of negation, we see the negative acting against itself, and this constitutes a process. The food that life requires, which it negates in the process of digestion, and assimilates, is, in the life process, again negated, eliminated from the organism, and replaced by new elements. A negation is made, and this is again negated. But the higher form of negation appears in the generic; “The species lives and the individual dies.” The generic continually transcends the individual—going forth to new individuals and deserting the old—a process of birth and decay, both negative processes. In conscious Spirit both are united in one-movement. The generic here enters the individual as pure _ego_—the undetermined possibility of all determinations. Since it is undetermined, it is negative to all special determinations. But this _ego_ not only exists as subject, but also as object—a process of self-determination or self-negation. And this negation or particularization continually proceeds from one object to another, and remains conscious under the whole, not dying, as the mere animal does, in the transition from individual to individual. This is the _aperçu_ of Immortality.