202.] Chemism, as it is a reflectional nexus of objectivity, has
pre-supposed, not merely the bias or non-indifferent nature of the
objects, but also their immediate independence. The process of chemism
consists in passing to and fro from one form to another; which forms
continue to be as external as before.--In the neutral product the
specific properties, which the extremes bore towards each other, are
merged. But although the product is conformable to the notion, the
inspiring principle of active differentiation does not exist in it; for
it has sunk back to immediacy. The neutral body is therefore capable
of disintegration. But the discerning principle, which breaks up the
neutral body into biassed and strained extremes, and which gives to
the indifferent object in general its affinity and animation towards
another;--that principle, and the process as a separation with tension,
falls outside of that first process.
* * * * *
The chemical process does not rise above a conditioned and finite
process. The notion as notion is only the heart and core of the
process, and does not in this stage come to an existence of its own.
In the neutral product the process is extinct, and the existing cause
falls outside it.
203.] Each of these two processes, the reduction of the biassed
(not-indifferent) to the neutral, and the differentiation of the
indifferent or neutral, goes its own way without hindrance from the
other. But that want of inner connexion shows that they are finite,
by their passage into products in which they are merged and lost.
Conversely the process exhibits the nonentity of the pre-supposed
immediacy of the not-indifferent objects.--By this negation of
immediacy and of externalism in which the notion as object was sunk,
it is liberated and invested with independent being in face of that
externalism and immediacy. In these circumstances it is the End (Final
Cause).
* * * * *
The passage from chemism to the teleological relation is implied in the
mutual cancelling of both of the forms of the chemical process. The
result thus attained is the liberation of the notion, which in chemism
and mechanism was present only in the germ, and not yet evolved. The
notion in the shape of the aim or end thus comes into independent
existence.
(c) _Teleology._
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