For what is produced in accordance with nature is always, or at least for the most part, produced” (external universality as the constant recurrence of what has passed away), “but this is not so with what happens through fortune or through chance. That in which there is an end (τέλος), equally in its character as something which precedes and as something which follows, is made into end; as therefore a thing is made, so is its nature, and as is its nature, so is it made; it exists therefore for the sake of this.” The meaning of nature is that as something is, it was in the beginning; it means this inward universality and adaptation to end that realizes itself; and thus cause and effect are identical, since all individual parts are related to this unity of end. “He who assumes contingent and accidental forms, subverts, on the other hand, both nature itself and that which subsists from nature, for that subsists from nature which has a principle within itself, by whose means, and being continually moved, it attains its end.” In this expression of Aristotle’s we now find the whole of the true profound Notion of life, which must be considered as an end in itself—a self-identity that independently impels itself on, and in its manifestation remains identical with its Notion: thus it is the self-effectuating Idea. Leaves, blossoms, roots thus bring the plant into evidence and go back into it; and that which they bring to pass is already present in the seed from which they took their origin. The chemical product, on the contrary, does not appear to have itself similarly present, for from acid and base a third appears to come forth; but here, likewise, the essence of both these sides, their relationship, is already present, though it is there mere potentiality, as it is in the product merely a thing. But the self-maintaining activity of life really brings forth this unity in all relationships. What has here been said is already contained in that which was asserted by those who do not represent nature in this way, but say, “that which is constituted as though it were constituted for an end, will endure.” For this is the self-productive action of nature. In the modern way of looking at life this conception becomes lost in two different ways; either through a mechanical philosophy, in which we always find as principle pressure, impulse, chemical relationships and forces, or external relations generally—which certainly seem to be inherent in nature, but not to proceed from the nature of the body, seeing that they are an added, foreign appendage, such as colour in a fluid; or else theological physics maintain the thoughts of an understanding outside of the world to be the causes. In the Kantian philosophy we for the first time have that conception once more awakened in us, for organic nature at least; life has there been made an end to itself. In Kant this indeed had only the subjective form which constitutes the essence of the Kantian philosophy, in which