Such, then, are the activities, in which the notion of animated life makes itself apparent. Moreover, the principle of Ideality thus rendered visible is not merely the result of _our_ reflection; it is _objectively_ real itself in the living subject, whose existence consequently we may go so far as to call an objective idealism. And it is the soul, as before stated, which, as this ideal energy, brings about its own manifestation[223], always reducing the _purely_ external reality of the body to an appearance, and thereby affirming itself as objective totality in that very bodily shape.
2. Now it is as the Idea made objectively visible to the senses that the animated life of Nature is _beautiful_; in so far, that is to say, as the truth or the Idea, presented in the form of Nature, where under it first appears, in other words life, is immediately given in the particular shape of reality adequate to it. Owing, however, to its sensuous immediacy the living beauty of Nature is neither beautiful _for itself_ nor is the beauty strictly that which is _the outcome_ of itself, a product, that is, of its purely objective appearance. The beauty of Nature is only beautiful for another, that is _for us_, the consciousness that apprehends its beauty. The question therefore arises in what way and by virtue of what characteristics the principle of life appears to us beautiful in its _immediate_ existence.
(_a_) If we look at the practical way in which a living object becomes visible and preserves itself, the first thing which rivets our attention is _spontaneous motion._ This motion, regarded simply as motion, is nothing more than the entirely abstract freedom of motion from place to place and from time to time, which we find exemplified in the spontaneous, but entirely haphazard movements of animal life. In music and the dance we have, it is true, motion in its generic significance; but here motion is not merely a matter of chance and impulse, but it exhibits the laws which regulate it; it is defined, complete in itself and subject to measure; and it is all this, though we still abstract from it the significance whereof it is the beautiful expression. If we again interpret the motion of animals as the realization of an aim originating within themselves, this excited impulse is still entirely accidental, an end of most restricted import. If we further extend our survey and conceive such motion as the activity and working together of all parts of the animal organism towards a definite purpose, we shall merely find that such a conception is rendered possible by our own effort of imagination[224]. The case is just the same if we reflect upon the way in which an animal gratifies its physical wants, obtains nourishment through the organs which grasp it, consume it, digest it, and generally is a subject of the process which preserves its life. For in this case also we have either only before us single desires and their spontaneous and haphazard gratification, in which the inward activity[225] of the organism is not present at all, or at least all these activities and their means of expression have become the subject of our imaginative reflection, which is at pains to understand such a process by relating it to definite ends, and to establish a harmony between aims assumed to belong to the animal itself and the organs which fulfill them.
