We have already in following the process of Nature up to its culminating manifestation in animal life drawn attention to the modes of beauty revealed in that process. It is now of the first importance that we fix our attention more definitely on the culminating phase of that evolution where we find subjectivity and individuality presented to us in the living organism. We have already referred to the beautiful as the Idea in a manner identical to that we employ when we speak of the good and true as the Idea, in the sense, that is to say, where we characterize the Idea as the wholly substantial and universal, the absolute substance--with no sensuous material therewith--of reality, in short, the consistency of the world. Determined more strictly, however, as already pointed out, the Idea is not merely substantiality and _universality_, but the unity of the _notion_ and its _reality_, just that, the notion revealed to us as notion in its coincident objectivity. It was Plato who, as we have remarked in our introduction, posited the Idea as that which was alone true and universal, and, indeed, as the one _concrete_ Universal. The Platonic _Idea_ is, however, not itself as yet the concrete _real_, for apprehended under the _notion_ and its _universality_ it is already coincident with the real. Apprehended, however, only in its _universality_[260], it is not _realized_, realized, that is to say, as Truth in its self-determinate realization. It is still only the _potency_ of such self-realization. But just as the notion is not the notion of real existence without its full objectivity, in the same way the Idea without its realization in the objective world is not the Idea in its Truth as existent reality. The Idea must proceed to such realization, which is only present itself for the first time in a really existent subjectivity adequate to the notion, and its ideal unity and self-determination. In the generic species we find its reality first manifested as free and concrete individuality. Life only exists as a _living thing_; goodness is only realized in _particular_ men; and all truth is simply the consciousness of _knowledge_--Spirit which has come to its own vital inheritance. Only the concrete singularity is both true and really existent, mere abstract universality and particularity is not so. This self-subsistent actuality, this subjectivity is the point on which everything turns, and which we must fully grasp in its significance. Subjectivity may be defined as ideal determination by virtue of a principle of ideal unity which asserts itself through _negation_ of the differences presented to it as consistent parts of one objective reality[261]. The unity of the Idea and its realization is the _negative_ unity of the _Idea_ as such and its _reality_; it is at once and at the same time the _subsumption_ and _deposition_ in a unified content of the difference asserted on either side. Only in this active process is the unity of