Essential correlation is the specific and completely universal
phase in which things appear. Everything that exists stands in
correlation, and this correlation is the veritable nature of every
existence. The existent thing in this way has no being of its own, but
only in something else: in this other however it is self-relation; and
correlation is the unity of the self-relation and relation-to-others.
The relation of the whole and the parts is untrue to this extent, that
the notion and the reality of the relation are not in harmony. The
notion of the whole is to contain parts: but if the whole is taken
and made what its notion implies, _i.e._ if it is divided, it at once
ceases to be a whole. Things there are, no doubt, which correspond
to this relation: but for that very reason they are low and untrue
existences. We must remember however what 'untrue' signifies. When
it occurs in a philosophical discussion, the term 'untrue' does not
signify that the thing to which it is applied is non-existent. A bad
state or a sickly body may exist all the same; but these things are
untrue, because their notion and their reality are out of harmony.
The relation of whole and parts, being the immediate relation, comes
easy to reflective understanding; and for that reason it often
satisfies when the question really turns on profounder ties. The limbs
and organs, for instance, of an organic body are not merely parts of
it: it is only in their unity that they are what they are, and they
are unquestionably affected by that unity, as they also in turn affect
it. These limbs and organs become mere parts, only when they pass under
the hands of the anatomist, whose occupation, be it remembered, is not
with the living body but with the corpse. Not that such analysis is
illegitimate: we only mean that the external and mechanical relation of
whole and parts is not sufficient for us, if we want to study organic
life in its truth. And if this be so in organic life, it is the case
to a much greater extent when we apply this relation to the mind and
the formations of the spiritual world. Psychologists may not expressly
speak of parts of the soul or mind, but the mode in which this
subject is treated by the analytic understanding is largely founded
on the analogy of this finite relation. At least that is so, when the
different forms of mental activity are enumerated and described merely
in their isolation one after another, as so-called special powers and
faculties.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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