The human form is not, however, as the animal form, merely the corporeal framework of the soul, but of _Spirit._ In other words, spirit and soul are essentially to be distinguished. For the soul is merely this ideal and simple unity of self-subsistence attaching to the body in its _corporeal_ aspect[141], whereas Spirit is the independent selfness of conscious and _self-conscious_ life together with all the emotions, ideas, and aims of such a conscious existence. In contemplating the immense difference which separates merely animal life from spiritual consciousness, it may appear strange that the bodily frame attaching to the _latter_, the human body, is nevertheless so clearly homogeneous with that of animal life. It will tend, however, to decrease such an astonishment if we recall to mind the definition, which Spirit itself has authorized us to make in accordance with its own notion, that it is a mode of life and essentially therefore itself also a _living soul_ and _natural existence._ As such living soul the life of conscious spirit, by virtue of the same notion that is inherent in the animal soul, is entitled to accept a body, which fundamentally in its general lines runs parallel to the organic structure of animal life. However superior to mere animal life Spirit may be it is evolved through[142] a corporeal frame whose visible appearance receives an identical articulation and principle of life with that which the notion of animal life in general underlies. Inasmuch as, however, and furthermore Spirit is not merely the _Idea_ as _determinate existence_, that is, the Idea as Nature and animal life, but the Idea which secures independence in its own free medium of ideality as Idea, the spiritual principle elaborates for itself its own specific mode of objectivity over and beyond that of animal life, simply, in other words, science, the reality of which is exclusively that of thought itself. Apart from thought, however, and its philosophical and systematized activity, Spirit is involved within an abounding life of feeling, inclination, idea, imagination, and so forth, which is fixed in a more direct or less immediate association with its vital being[143] and bodily frame, and consequently possesses a reality in the human body. In this reality, which is part of its own substance, Spirit asserts itself also as a principle of life, shines into it, transpierces it, and is made manifest to others by means of it. Consequently, in so far as the human body remains no purely natural existence, but has asserted itself also in its configuration and structure as the natural and sensuous existence of Spirit, it is, nevertheless, regarded as the expression of an ideality more exalted than that compatible with the purely animal body to be distinguished from it, despite the fact that the human body in its broad lines is in harmony with it. For this reason, however, that Spirit is itself soul and life, that is, an animal body, it is and