it makes for itself an ideal object,
which includes its own self and its not-self at the same time. It is a
higher form than mere nutrition; for nutrition destroys the nature of
such externality as it receives into itself, while feeling preserves the
external in its foreign individuality.

But through _feeling_ the animal ascends to _desire_, and sees the
independent externality as an object for its acquisition, and through
locomotion it is enabled to seize and appropriate it in a degree which
the plant did not possess.

III.

The various forms of feeling--its specialization: (_a_)
touch, the feeling of mere limits, the indifferent
external independence of the organism and its
surroundings; (_b_) taste, feeling of the external object
when it is undergoing dissolution by assimilation; (_c_)
smell, the feeling of chemical dissolution in general;
(_d_) hearing, the feeling of the resistance of bodies
against attacks: sound being vibration caused by elastic
reaction against attacks on cohesion; (_e_) seeing, the
feeling of objects in their independence, without
dissolution or attack; plant life, nutrition, a process in
which the individuality is not preserved either in time or
in space; animal life, as feeling, preserves its
individuality as regards space, but not as regards time.

Having noted these important characteristics of the lower orders of
life, and found that _reaction_ from the part against the whole--from
the internal against the external--belongs to plant life and animal
life, we may now briefly mention the ways in which feeling is
particularized. In the lower animals it is only the feeling of touch; in
higher organisms it becomes also localized as seeing, hearing, taste,
and smell. These forms of sense-perception constitute a scale (as it
were) of feeling. With touch, there is reproduction of externality, but
the ideality of the reproduction is not so complete as in the other
forms. With taste, the feeling cognizes the external object as
undergoing dissolution, and assimilation within its own organism. We
taste only what we are beginning to destroy by the first process of
assimilation--that of eating. In smell, we perceive chemical dissolution
of bodies. In seeing and hearing, we have the forms of _ideal_
sensibility. Hearing perceives the attack made on the individuality of
an external thing, and its reaction in vibrations, which reveal to us
its internal nature--its cohe