Wholes like the state and the church cease to exist in concreto when the unity of their concept and their reality is dissolved; the human being, the living thing, is dead when soul and body are parted in it; dead nature, the mechanical and the chemical world that is, when 'the dead' is taken to mean the inorganic world, for the expression would otherwise have no positive meaning at all this dead nature, then, if it is separated into its concept and its reality, is nothing but the subjective abstraction of a thought form and a formless matter.