ABSTRACT
The animal organism is the microcosm, the centre of nature which has become for itself within it, the whole of inorganic nature has recapitulated itself, and is idealized, and it is this that has to be demonstrated by the more detailed exposition of it. The animal organism is essentially reproductive, reproduction constitutes its actuality. In living existence, the higher natures are those in which the abstract moments of sensibility and irritability have a distinct existence; lower living existence is no more than reproduction, but in its higher natures it contains profounder differences and preserves itself in this more cutting diremption. Thus there are animals which are nothing but reproduction; they are an amorphous jelly, an active and intro-reflected slime, and in them there is as yet no distinction between sensibility and irritability.
