(2) Objectivity contains the three forms of Mechanism, Chemism,
and Teleology. The object of mechanical type is the immediate and
undifferentiated object. No doubt it contains difference, but the
different pieces stand, as it were, without affinity to each other,
and their connexion is only extraneous. In chemism, on the contrary,
the object exhibits an essential tendency to differentiation, in such
a way that the objects are what they are only by their relation to
each other: this tendency to difference constitutes their quality.
The third type of objectivity, the teleological relation, is the
unity of mechanism and chemism. Design, like the mechanical object,
is a self-contained totality, enriched however by the principle of
differentiation which came to the fore in chemism, and thus referring
itself to the object that stands over against it. Finally, it is the
realisation of design which forms the transition to the Idea.
(a) _Mechanism._
196.] The object (1) in its immediacy is the notion only potentially;
the notion as subjective is primarily outside it; and all its
specific character is imposed from without. As a unity of differents,
therefore, it is a composite, an aggregate; and its capacity of
acting on anything else continues to be an external relation. This is
Formal Mechanism.--Notwithstanding, and in this connexion and
non-independence, the objects remain independent and offer resistance,
external to each other.
Pressure and impact are examples of mechanical relations. Our knowledge
is said to be mechanical or by rote, when the words have no meaning
for us, but continue external to sense, conception, thought; and
when, being similarly external to each other, they form a meaningless
sequence. Conduct, piety, &c. are in the same way mechanical, when a
man's behaviour is settled for him by ceremonial laws, by a spiritual
adviser, &c.; in short, when his own mind and will are not in his
actions, which in this way are extraneous to himself.
* * * * *
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