217.] A living being is a syllogism, of which the very elements are in themselves systems and syllogisms (§§ 198, 201, 207). They are however active syllogisms or processes; and in the subjective unity of the vital agent make only one process. Thus the living being is the process of its coalescence with itself, which runs on through three processes. 218.] (1) The first is the process of the living being inside itself. In that process it makes a split on its own self, and reduces its corporeity to its object or its inorganic nature. This corporeity, as an aggregate of correlations, enters in its very nature into difference and opposition of its elements, which mutually become each other's prey, and assimilate one another, and are retained by producing themselves. Yet this action of the several members (organs), is only the living subject's one act to which their productions revert; so that in these productions nothing is produced except the subject: in other words, the subject only reproduces itself. * * * * * The process of the vital subject within its own limits has in Nature the threefold form of Sensibility, Irritability, and Reproduction. As Sensibility, the living being is immediately simple self-relation--it is the soul omnipresent in its body, the outsideness of each member of which to others has for it no truth. As Irritability, the living being appears split up in itself; and as Reproduction, it is perpetually restoring itself from the inner distinction of its members and organs. A vital agent only exists as this continually self-renewing process within its own limits. 219.] (2) But the judgment of the notion proceeds, as free, to discharge the objective or bodily nature as an independent totality from itself; and the negative relation of the living thing to itself makes, as immediate individuality, the pre-supposition of an inorganic nature confronting it. As this negative of the animate is no less a function in the notion of the animate itself, it exists consequently in the latter (which is at the same time a concrete universal) in the shape of a defect or want. The dialectic by which the object, being implicitly null, is merged, is the action of the self-assured living thing, which in this process against an inorganic nature thus retains, develops, and objectifies itself. * * * * *