Chapter XXVI: Introduction: To the Outlines of a System of Natural Philosophy; (1)

OR,
ON THE IDEA OF SPECULATIVE PHYSICS AND THE INTERNAL ORGANIZATION OF A
SYSTEM OF THIS SCIENCE.
1799.
[Translated from the German of SCHELLING, by TOM DAVIDSON.]

I.
WHAT WE CALL NATURAL PHILOSOPHY IS A NECESSARY SCIENCE IN THE SYSTEM OF
KNOWING.

The Intelligence is productive in two modes—that is, either blindly and unconsciously, or freely and consciously;—unconsciously productive in external intuition, consciously in the creation of an ideal world.

Philosophy removes this distinction by assuming the unconscious activity as originally identical, and, as it were, sprung from the same root with the conscious; this identity is by it _directly_ proved in the case of an activity at once clearly conscious and unconscious, which manifests itself in the productions of genius, _indirectly_, outside of consciousness, in the products of _Nature_, so far as in them all, the most complete fusion of the Ideal with the Real is perceived.

Since philosophy assumes the unconscious, or, as it may likewise be termed, the real activity as identical with the conscious or ideal, its tendency will originally be to bring back everywhere the real to the ideal—a process which gives birth to what is called Transcendental Philosophy. The regularity displayed in all the movements of Nature—for example, the sublime geometry which is exercised in the motions of the heavenly bodies—is not explained by saying that Nature is the most perfect geometry; but conversely, by saying that the most perfect geometry is what produces in Nature;—a mode of explanation whereby the Real itself is transported into the ideal world, and those motions are changed into intuitions, which take place only in ourselves, and to which nothing outside of us corresponds. Again, the fact that Nature, wherever it is left to itself, in every transition from a fluid to a solid state, produces, of its own accord, as it were, regular forms—which regularity, in the higher species of crystallization, namely, the organic, seems to become purpose even; or the fact that in the animal kingdom—that product of the blind forces of Nature—we see actions arise which are equal in regularity to those that take place with consciousness, and even external works of art, perfect in their kind;—all this is not explained by saying that it is an unconscious productivity, though in its origin akin to the conscious, whose mere reflex we see in Nature, and which, from the stand-point of the natural view, must appear as one and the same blind tendency, which exerts its influence from crystallization upwards to the highest point of organic formation (in which, on one side, through the art-tendency, it returns again to mere crystallization) only acting upon different planes.

According to this view, inasmuch as Nature is only the visible organism of our understanding, Nature _can_ produce nothing but what shows regularity and design, and Nature is _compelled_ to produce that. But if Nature can produce only the regular, and produces it from necessity, it follows that the origin of such regular and design-evincing products must again be capable of being proved necessary in Nature, regarded as self-existent and real, and in the relation of its forces;—_that therefore, conversely, the Ideal must arise out of the Real, and admit of explanation from it_.

If, now, it is the task of Transcendental Philosophy to subordinate the Real to the Ideal, it is, on the other hand, the task of Natural Philosophy to explain the Ideal by the Real. The two sciences are therefore but one science, whose two problems are distinguished by the opposite directions in which they move; moreover, as the two directions are not only equally possible, but equally necessary, the same necessity attaches to both in the system of knowing.

II.
SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY.

Natural Philosophy, as the opposite of Transcendental Philosophy, is distinguished from the latter chiefly by the fact that it posits Nature (not, indeed, in so far as it is a product, but in so far as it is at once productive and product) as the self-existent; whence it may be most briefly designated as the Spinozism of Physics. It follows naturally from this that there is no place in this science for idealistic methods of explanation, such as Transcendental Philosophy is fitted to supply, from the circumstance that for it Nature is nothing more than the organ of self-consciousness, and everything in Nature is necessary merely because it is only through the medium of such a Nature that self-consciousness can take place; this mode of explanation, however, is as meaningless in the case of physics, and of our science which occupies the same stand-point with it, as were the old teleological modes of explanation, and the introduction of a universal reference to final causes into the thereby metamorphosed science of Nature. For every idealistic mode of explanation, dragged out of its own proper sphere and applied to the explanation of Nature, degenerates into the most adventurous nonsense, examples of which are well known. The first maxim of all true natural science, viz., to explain everything by the forces of Nature, is therefore accepted in its widest extent in our science, and even extended to that region, at the limit of which all interpretation of Nature has hitherto been accustomed to stop short; for example, to those organic phenomena which seem to pre-suppose an analogy with reason. For, granted that in the actions of animals there really is something which pre-supposes such analogy, on the principle of realism, nothing further would follow than that what we call reason is a mere play of higher and necessarily unknown natural forces. For, inasmuch as all thinking is at last reducible to a producing and reproducing, there is nothing impossible in the thought that the same activity by which Nature reproduces itself anew in each successive phase, is reproductive in thought through the medium of the organism (very much in the same manner in which, through the action and play of light, Nature, which exists independently of it, is created immaterial, and, as it were, for a second time), in which circumstance it is natural that what forms the limit of our intuitive faculty, no longer falls within the sphere of our intuition itself.

III.
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY IS SPECULATIVE PHYSICS.

Our science, as far as we have gone, is thoroughly and completely realistic; it is therefore nothing other than Physics, it is only _speculative_ Physics; in its tendency it is exactly what the systems of the ancient physicists were, and what, in more recent times, the system of the restorer of Epicurean philosophy is, viz., Lesage’s Mechanical Physics, by which the speculative spirit in physics, after a long scientific sleep, has again, for the first time, been awakened. It cannot be shown in detail here (for the proof itself falls within the sphere of our science), that on the mechanical or atomistic basis which has been adopted by Lesage and his most successful predecessors, the idea of speculative physics is incapable of realization. For, inasmuch as the first problem of this science, that of inquiring into the _absolute_ cause of motion (without which Nature is not in itself a finished whole), is absolutely incapable of a mechanical solution, seeing that mechanically motion results only from motion _ad infinitum_, there remains for the real construction of speculative physics only one way open, viz., the dynamic, which lays down that motion arises not only from motion, but even from rest; that, therefore, there is motion in the rest of Nature, and that all mechanical motion is the merely secondary and derivative motion of that which is solely primitive and original, and which wells forth from the very first factors in the construction of a nature generally (the fundamental forces).

In hereby making clear the points of difference between our undertaking and all those of a similar nature that have hitherto been attempted, we have at the same time shown the difference between speculative physics and so-called empirical physics; a difference which in the main may be reduced to this, that the former occupies itself solely and entirely with the original causes of motion in nature, that is, solely with the dynamical phenomena; the latter, on the contrary, inasmuch as it never reaches a final source of motion in nature, deals only with the secondary motions, and even with the original ones only as mechanical (and therefore likewise capable of mathematical construction). The former, in fact, aims generally at the inner spring-work and what is _non-objective_ in Nature; the latter, on the contrary, only at the _surface_ of Nature, and what is objective, and, so to speak, _outside_ in it.

IV.
ON THE POSSIBILITY OF SPECULATIVE PHYSICS.

Inasmuch as our inquiry is directed not so much upon the phenomena of Nature as upon their final grounds, and our business is not so much to deduce the latter from the former as the former from the latter, our task is simply this: to erect a science of Nature in the strictest sense of the term; and in order to find out whether speculative physics are possible, we must know what belongs to the possibility of a doctrine of Nature viewed as science.

(_a_) The idea of knowing is here taken in its strictest sense, and then it is easy to see that, in this acceptation of the term, we can be said to know objects only when they are such that we see the principles of their possibility, for without this insight my whole knowledge of an object, e. g. of a machine, with whose construction I am unacquainted, is a mere seeing, that is, a mere conviction of its existence, whereas the inventor of the machine has the most perfect knowledge of it, because he is, as it were, the soul of the work, and because it preëxisted in his head before he exhibited it as a reality.

Now, it would certainly be impossible to obtain a glance into the internal construction of Nature, if an invasion of Nature were not possible through freedom. It is true that Nature acts openly and freely; its acts however are never isolated, but performed under a concurrence of a host of causes, which must first be excluded if we are to obtain a pure result. Nature must therefore be compelled to act under certain definite conditions, which either do not exist in it at all, or else exist only as modified by others.—Such an invasion of Nature we call an experiment. Every experiment is a question put to Nature, to which she is compelled to give a reply. But every question contains an implicit _à priori_ judgment; every experiment that is an experiment, is a prophecy; experimenting itself is a production of phenomena. The first step, therefore, towards science, at least in the domain of physics, is taken when we ourselves begin to produce the objects of that science.

(_b_) We _know_ only the self-produced; knowing, therefore, in the _strictest_ acceptation of the term, is a _pure_ knowing _à priori_. Construction by means of experiment, is, after all, an absolute self-production of the phenomena. There is no question but that much in the science of Nature may be known comparatively _à priori_; as, for example, in the theory of the phenomena of electricity, magnetism, and even light. There is such a simple law recurring in every phenomenon that the results of every experiment may be told beforehand; here my knowing follows immediately from a known law, without the intervention of any particular experience. But whence then does the law itself come to me? The assertion is, that all phenomena are correlated in one absolute and necessary law, from which they can all be deduced; in short, that in natural science all that we know, we know absolutely _à priori_. Now, that experiment never leads to such a knowing, is plainly manifest, from the fact that it can never get beyond the forces of Nature, of which itself makes use as means.

As the final causes of natural phenomena are themselves not phenomenal, we must either give up all attempt ever to arrive at a knowledge of them, or else we must altogether put them into Nature, endow Nature with them. But now, that which we put into Nature has no other value than that of a pre-supposition (hypothesis), and the science founded thereon must be equally hypothetical with the principle itself. This it would be possible to avoid only in one case, viz., if that pre-supposition itself were involuntary, and as necessary as Nature itself. Assuming, for example, what must be assumed, that the sum of phenomena is not a mere world, but of necessity a Nature—that is, that this whole is not merely a product, but at the same time productive, it follows that in this whole we can never arrive at absolute identity, inasmuch as this would bring about an absolute transition of Nature, in as far as it is productive, into Nature as product, that is, it would produce absolute rest; such wavering of Nature, therefore, between productivity and product, will, of necessity, appear as a universal duplicity of principles, whereby Nature is maintained in continual activity, and prevented from exhausting itself in its product; and universal duality as the principle of explanation of Nature will be as necessary as the idea of Nature itself.

This absolute hypothesis must carry its necessity within itself, but it must, besides this, be brought to empiric proof; for, inasmuch as all the phenomena of Nature cannot be deduced from this hypothesis as long as there is in the whole system of Nature a single phenomenon which is not necessary according to that principle, or which contradicts it, the hypothesis is thereby at once shown to be false, and from that moment ceases to have validity as an hypothesis.

By this deduction of all natural phenomena from an absolute hypothesis, our knowing is changed into a construction of Nature itself, that is, into a science of Nature _à priori_. If, therefore, such deduction itself is possible, a thing which can be proved only by the fact, then also a doctrine of Nature is possible as a science of Nature; a system of purely speculative physics is possible, which was the point to be proved.

_Remark._—There would be no necessity for this remark, if the confusion which still prevails in regard to ideas perspicuous enough in themselves did not render some explanation with regard to them requisite.

The assertion that natural science must be able to deduce all its principles _à priori_, is in a measure understood to mean that natural science must dispense with all experience, and, without any intervention of experience, be able to spin all its principles out of itself—an affirmation so absurd that the very objections to it deserve pity. _Not only do we know this or that through experience, but we originally know nothing at all except through experience, and by means of experience_, and in this sense the whole of our knowledge consists of the data of experience. These data become _à priori_ principles when we become conscious of them as necessary, and thus every datum, be its import what it may, may be raised to that dignity, inasmuch as the distinction between _à priori_ and _à posteriori_ data is not at all, as many people may have imagined, one originally cleaving to the data themselves, but is a distinction made solely _with respect to our knowing_, and the _kind_ of our knowledge of these data, so that every datum which is merely historical for me—i. e. a datum of experience—becomes, notwithstanding, an _à priori_ principle as soon as I arrive, whether directly or indirectly, at insight into its internal necessity. Now, however, it must in all cases be possible to recognize every natural phenomenon as absolutely necessary; for, if there is no chance in nature at all, there can likewise be no original phenomenon of Nature fortuitous; on the contrary, for the very reason that Nature is a system, there must be a necessary connection for everything that happens or comes to pass in it, in some principle embracing the whole of Nature. Insight into this internal necessity of all natural phenomena becomes, of course, still more complete, as soon as we reflect that there is no real system which is not, at the same time, an organic whole. For if, in an organic whole, all things mutually bear and support each other, then this organization must have existed as a whole previous to its parts—the whole could not have arisen from the parts, but the parts must have arisen out of the whole. _It is not, therefore_, WE KNOW _Nature, but Nature_ IS, _à priori_, that is, everything individual in it is predetermined by the whole or by the idea of a Nature generally. But if Nature _is_ _à priori_, then it must be possible to _recognize_ it _as_ something that is _à priori_, and this is really the meaning of our affirmation.

Such a science, like every other, does not deal with the hypothetical, or the merely probable, but depends upon the evident and the certain. Now, we may indeed be quite certain that every natural phenomenon, through whatever number of intermediate links, stands in connection with the last conditions of a Nature; the intermediate links themselves, however, may be unknown to us, and still lying hidden in the depths of Nature. To find out these links is the work of experimental research. Speculative physics have nothing to do but to show the need of these intermediate links;[18] but as every new discovery throws us back upon a new ignorance, and while one knot is being loosed a new one is being tied, it is conceivable that the complete discovery of all the intermediate links in the chain of Nature, and therefore also our science itself, is an infinite task. Nothing, however, has more impeded the infinite progress of this science than the arbitrariness of the fictions by which the want of profound insight was so long doomed to be concealed. This fragmentary nature of our knowledge becomes apparent only when we separate what is merely hypothetical from the pure out-come of science, and thereupon set out to collect the fragments of the great whole of Nature again into a system. It is, therefore, conceivable that speculative physics (the soul of real experiment) has, in all time, been the mother of all great discoveries in Nature.

V.
OF A SYSTEM OF SPECULATIVE PHYSICS GENERALLY.

Hitherto the idea of speculative physics has been deduced and developed; it is another business to show how this idea must be realized and actually carried out.

The author, for this purpose, would at once refer to his Outlines of a System of Natural Philosophy, if he had not reason to suspect that many even of those who might consider those Outlines worthy of their attention, would come to it with certain preconceived ideas, which he has not presupposed, and which he does not desire to have pre-supposed.

The causes which may render an insight into the tendency of those Outlines difficult, are (exclusive of defects of style and arrangement) mainly, the following:

1. That many persons, misled perhaps by the word _Natural Philosophy_, expect to find transcendental deductions from natural phenomena, such as, in different fragments, exist elsewhere, and will regard natural philosophy generally as a part of transcendental philosophy, whereas it forms a science altogether peculiar, altogether different from, and independent of, every other.

2. That the notions of dynamical physics hitherto diffused, are very different from, and partially at variance with, those which the author lays down. I do not speak of the modes of representation which several persons, whose business is really mere experiment, have figured to themselves in this connection; for example, where they suppose it to be a dynamical explanation, when they reject a galvanic fluid, and accept instead of it certain vibrations in the metals; for these persons, as soon as they observe that they have understood nothing of the matter, will revert, of their own accord, to their previous representations, which were made for them. I speak of the modes of representation which have been put into philosophic heads by Kant, and which may be mainly reduced to this: that we see in matter nothing but the occupation of space in definite degrees, in all difference of matter, therefore, only mere difference of occupation of space (i. e. density,) in all dynamic (qualitative) changes, only mere changes in the relation of the repelling and attracting forces. Now, according to this mode of representation, all the phenomena of Nature are looked at only on their lowest plane, and the dynamical physics of these philosophers begin precisely at the point where they ought properly to leave off. It is indeed certain that the last result of every dynamical process is a changed degree of occupation of space—that is, a changed density; inasmuch, now, as the dynamical process of Nature is one, and the individual dynamical processes are only shreds of the one fundamental process—even magnetic and electric phenomena, viewed from this stand-point, will be, not actions of particular materials, but changes in the constitution of matter itself; and as this depends upon the mutual action of the fundamental forces, at last, changes in the relation of the fundamental forces themselves. We do not indeed deny that these phenomena at the extreme limit of their manifestation are changes in the relation of the principles themselves; we only deny that these changes are nothing more; on the contrary, we are convinced that this so-called dynamical principle is too superficial and defective a basis of explanation for all Nature’s phenomena, to reach the real depth and manifoldness of natural phenomena, inasmuch as by means of it, in point of fact, no qualitative change of matter _as_ such is constructible (for change of density is only the external phenomenon of a higher change). To adduce proof of this assertion is not incumbent upon us, till, from the opposite side, that principle of explanation is shown by actual fact to exhaust Nature, and the great chasm is filled up between that kind of dynamical philosophy and the empirical attainments of physics—as, for example, in regard to the very different kinds of effects exhibited by simple substances—a thing which, let us say at once, we consider to be impossible.

We may therefore be permitted, in the room of the hitherto prevailing dynamic mode of representation, to place our own without further remark—a procedure which will no doubt clearly show wherein the latter differs from the former, and by which of the two the Doctrine of Nature may most certainly be raised to a Science of Nature.

VI.
INTERNAL ORGANIZATION OF THE SYSTEM OF SPECULATIVE PHYSICS.

1.

An inquiry into the Principle of speculative physics must be preceded by inquiries into the distinction between the speculative and the empirical generally. This depends mainly upon the conviction that between empiricism and theory there is such a complete opposition that there can be no third thing in which the two may be united; that, therefore, the idea of Experimental Science is a mongrel idea, which implies no connected thought, or rather, which cannot be thought at all. What is pure empiricism is not science, and, _vice versâ_, what is science is not empiricism. This is not said for the purpose of at all depreciating empiricism, but is meant to exhibit it in its true and proper light. Pure empiricism, be its object what it may, is history (the absolute opposite of theory), and, conversely, history alone is empiricism.[19]

Physics, as empiricism, are nothing but a collection of facts, of accounts of what has been observed—what has happened under natural or artificial circumstances. In what we at present designate physics, empiricism and science run riot together, and for that very reason they are neither one thing nor another.

Our aim, in view of this object, is to separate science and empiricism as soul and body, and by admitting nothing into science which is not susceptible of an _à priori_ construction, to strip empiricism of all theory, and restore it to its original nakedness.

The opposition between empiricism and science rests therefore upon this: that the former regards its object in _being_—as something already prepared and accomplished; science, on the other hand, views its object in _becoming_, and as something that has yet to be accomplished. As science cannot set out from anything that is a product—that is, a thing—it must set out from the unconditioned; the first inquiry of speculative physics is that which relates to the unconditioned in natural science.

2.

As this inquiry is, in the Outlines, deduced from the highest principles, the following may be regarded as merely an illustration of those inquiries:

Inasmuch as everything of which we can say that it _is_, is of a conditioned nature, it is only _being itself_ that can be the unconditioned. But seeing that individual being, as a conditioned, can be thought only as a particular limitation of the productive activity (the sole and last substrate of all reality) _being itself_ is _thought_ as the same productive activity _in its unlimitedness_. For the philosophy of nature, therefore, nature is originally only productivity, and from this as its principle science must set out.

So long as we know the totality of objects only as the sum of being, this totality is a mere world—that is, a mere product for us. It would certainly be impossible in the science of Nature to rise to a higher idea than that of being, if all permanence (which is thought in the idea of being) were not deceptive, and really a continuous and uniform reproduction.

In so far as we regard the totality of objects not merely as a product, but at the same time necessarily as productive, it rises into _Nature_ for us, and this _identity of the product and the productivity_, and this alone is implied, even in the ordinary use of language by the idea of Nature.

Nature as a mere product (_natura naturata_) we call Nature as object (with this alone all empiricism deals). Nature as productivity (_natura naturans_) we call Nature as subject (with this alone all theory deals).

As the object is never unconditioned, something absolutely non-objective must be put into Nature; this absolutely non-objective is nothing else but that original productivity of Nature. In the ordinary view it vanishes in the product: conversely in the philosophic view the product vanishes in the productivity.

Such identity of the product and the productivity in the original conception of Nature is expressed by the ordinary views of Nature as a whole, which is at once the cause and the effect of itself, and is in its duplicity (which goes through all phenomena) again identical. Furthermore, with this idea the identity of the Real and the Ideal agrees—an identity which is thought in the idea of every product of Nature, and in view of which alone the nature of art can be placed in opposition thereto. For whereas in art the idea precedes the act—the execution—in Nature idea and act are rather contemporary and one; the idea passes immediately over into the product, and cannot be separated from it.

This identity is cancelled by the empirical view, which sees in Nature only the effect (although on account of the continual wandering of empiricism into the field of science, we have, even in purely empirical physics, maxims which presuppose an idea of Nature as subject—as, for example, Nature chooses the shortest way; Nature is sparing in causes and lavish in effects); it is also cancelled by speculation, which looks only at _cause_ in Nature.

3.

We can say of Nature as object that it _is_, not of Nature as subject; for this is being or productivity.

This absolute productivity must pass over into an empirical nature. In the idea of absolute productivity, is the thought of an ideal infinity. The ideal infinity must become an empirical one.

But empirical infinity is an infinite becoming. Every infinite series is but the exhibition of an intellectual or ideal infinity. The original infinite series (the ideal of all infinite series) is that wherein our intellectual infinity evolves itself, viz., _Time_. The activity which sustains this series is the same as that which sustains our consciousness; consciousness, however, is _continuous_. Time, therefore, as the evolution of that activity, cannot be produced by composition. Now, as all other infinite series are only imitations of the originally infinite series, Time, no infinite series can be otherwise than continuous. In the original evolution the retarding agent (without which the evolution would take place with infinite rapidity) is nothing but _original reflection_; the necessity of reflection upon our acting in every organic phase (continued duplicity in identity) is the secret stroke of art whereby our being receives _permanence_.

Absolute continuity, therefore, exists only for the intuition, but not for the _reflection_. Intuition and reflection are opposed to each other. The infinite series is continuous for the productive _intuition_—interrupted and composite for the _reflection_. It is on this _contradiction_ between intuition and reflection that those sophisms are based, in which the possibility of all motion is contested, and which are solved at every successive step by the productive activity. To the intuition, for example, the action of gravity takes place with perfect continuity; to the reflection, by fits and starts. Hence all the laws of mechanics, whereby that which is properly only the object of the productive intuition becomes an object of reflection, are really only laws for the reflection. Hence those fictitious notions of mechanics, the atoms of time in which gravitation acts, the law that the moment of solicitation is infinitely small, because otherwise an infinite rapidity would be produced in finite time, &c., &c. Hence, finally, the assertion that in mathematics no infinite series can really be represented as continuous, but only as advancing by fits and starts.

The whole of this inquiry into the opposition between reflection and the productivity of the intuition, serves only to enable us to deduce the general statement that in _all_ productivity, and in productivity alone, there is absolute _continuity_—a statement of importance in the consideration of the whole of Nature; inasmuch, for example, as the law that in Nature there is no leap, that there is a continuity of forms in it, &c., is confined to the original productivity of Nature, in which certainly there must be continuity, whereas from the stand-point of reflection all things must appear _disconnected_ and _without_ continuity—placed beside each other, as it were; we must therefore admit that both parties are right; those, namely, who assert continuity in Nature—for example, in organic Nature—no less than those who deny it, when we take into consideration the difference of their respective stand-points; and we thereby, at the same time, arrive at the distinction between dynamical and atomistic physics; for, as will soon become apparent, the two are distinguished only by the fact that the former occupies the stand-point of _intuition_, the latter that of _reflection_.

4.

These general principles being presupposed, we shall be able, with more certainty, to reach our aim, and make an exposition of the internal organism of our system.

(_a_) In the idea of becoming, we think the idea of gradualness. But an absolute productivity will exhibit itself empirically as a becoming with infinite rapidity, whereby there results nothing real for the intuition.

(Inasmuch as Nature must in reality be thought as engaged in infinite evolution, the permanence, the resting of the products of Nature—the organic ones, for instance—is not to be viewed as an absolute resting, but only as an evolution proceeding with infinitely small rapidity or with infinite tardiness. But hitherto evolution, with even finite rapidity, not to speak of infinitely small rapidity, has not been constructed.)

(_b_) That the evolution of Nature should take place with finite rapidity, and thus become an object of intuition, is not thinkable without an original limitation (a being limited) of the productivity.

(_c_) But if Nature be absolute productivity, then the ground of this limitation may lie _outside of it_. Nature is originally _only_ productivity; there can, therefore, be nothing determined in this productivity (all determination is negation) and so products can never be reached by it. If products are to be reached, the productivity must pass from being undetermined to being determined—that is, it must, as pure productivity, be cancelled. If now the ground of determination of productivity lay outside of Nature, Nature would not be originally absolutely productivity. Determination, that is, negation, must certainly come into Nature; but this negation, viewed from a higher stand-point, must again be positivity.

(_d_) But if the ground of this limitation lies _within Nature itself_, then Nature ceases to be _pure identity_. (Nature, in so far as it is only productivity, is pure identity, and there is in it absolutely nothing capable of being distinguished. In order that anything may be distinguished in it, its identity must be cancelled—Nature must not be identity, but duplicity.)

Nature must originally be an object to itself; this change of the pure subject into a self-object is unthinkable without an original sundering in Nature itself.

This duplicity cannot therefore be further deduced physically; for, as the condition of all Nature generally, it is the principle of all physical explanation, and all physical explanation can only have for its aim the reduction of all the antitheses which appear in Nature to that original antithesis in the heart of Nature, _which does not, however, itself appear_. Why is there no original phenomenon of Nature without this duplicity, if in Nature all things are not mutually subject and object to each other _ad infinitum_, and Nature even, in its origin, at once product and productive?

(_e_) If Nature is originally duplicity, there must be opposite tendencies even in the original productivity of Nature. (The positive tendency must be opposed by another, which is, as it were, anti-productive—retarding production; not as the contradictory, but as the negative—the really opposite of the former.) It is only then that, in spite of its being limited, there is no passivity in Nature, when even that which limits it is again positive, and its original duplicity is a contest of really opposite tendencies.

(_f_) In order to arrive at a product, these opposite tendencies must concur. But as they are supposed equal, (for there is no ground for supposing them unequal,) wherever they meet they will annihilate each other; the product is therefore = 0, and once more no product is reached.

This inevitable, though hitherto not very closely remarked contradiction (namely, that a product can arise only through the concurrence of opposite tendencies, while at the same time these opposite tendencies mutually annihilate each other) is capable of being solved only in the following manner: There is absolutely no _subsistence_ of a product thinkable, _without a continual process of being reproduced_. The product must be thought as _annihilated at every step_, and at _every step reproduced anew_. We do not really see the subsisting of a product, but only the continual process of being reproduced.

(It is of course very conceivable how the series 1-1+1-1... on to infinity is thought as equal neither to 1 nor to 0. The reason however why this series is thought as =1/2 lies deeper. There is one absolute magnitude (=1), which, though continually annihilated in this series, continually recurs, and by this recurrence produces, not itself, but the mean between itself and nothing.—Nature, as object, is that which comes to pass in such an infinite series, and is = a fraction of the original unit, to which the never cancelled duplicity supplies the numerator.)

(_g_) If the subsistence of the product is a continual process of being reproduced, then all _persistence_ also is only in nature as _object_; in nature as _subject_ there is only infinite _activity_.

The product is originally nothing but a mere point, a mere limit, and it is only from Nature’s combatting against this point that it is, so to speak, raised to a full sphere—to a product. (Suppose, for illustration, a stream; it is _pure identity_; where it meets resistance, there is formed a whirlpool; this whirlpool is not anything abiding, but something that every moment vanishes, and every moment springs up anew.—In Nature there is originally nothing distinguishable; all products are, so to speak, still in solution, and invisible in the universal productivity. It is only when retarding points are given, that they are thrown off and advance out of the universal identity.—At every such point the stream breaks (the productivity is annihilated), but at every step there comes a new wave which fills up the sphere).

The philosophy of nature has not to explain the productive (side) of nature; for if it does not posit this as in nature originally, it will never bring it into nature. It has to explain the permanent. But the fact _that_ anything should become permanent in nature, can itself receive its explanation only from that contest of nature _against all permanence_. The products would appear as mere points, if nature did not give them extension and depth by its own pressure, and the products themselves would last only an instant, if nature did not at every instant crowd up against them.

(_h_) This seeming product, which is reproduced at every step, cannot be a really infinite product; for otherwise productivity would actually exhaust itself in it; in like manner it cannot be a finite product; for it is the force of the whole of nature that pours itself into it. It must therefore be at once infinite and finite; it must be only seemingly finite, but in infinite development.

* * * * *

The point at which this product originally comes in, is the universal point of retardation in nature, the point from which all evolution in nature begins. But in nature, as it is evolved, this point lies not here or there, but everywhere where there is a product.

This product is a finite one, but as the infinite productivity of nature concentrates itself in it, it must have a tendency to infinite development.—And thus gradually, and through all the foregoing intermediate links, we have arrived at the construction of that infinite becoming—the empirical exhibition of an ideal infinity.

We behold in what is called nature (i. e. in this assemblage of individual objects), not the primal product itself, but its evolution, (hence the point of retardation cannot remain _one_.)—By what means _this_ evolution is again absolutely retarded, which must happen, if we are to arrive at a fixed product, has not yet been explained.

But through this product an original infinity evolves itself; this infinity can never decrease. The magnitude which evolves itself in an infinite series, is still infinite at every point of the line; and thus nature will be still infinite at every point of the evolution.

There is only one original point of retardation to productivity; but any number of points of retardation to evolution may be thought. Every such point is marked for us by a product; but at every point of the evolution nature is still infinite; therefore nature is still infinite in every product, and in every one lies the germ of a universe.[20]

(The question, by what means the infinite tendency is retarded in the product, is still unanswered. The original retardation in the productivity of nature, explains only why the evolution takes place with finite rapidity, but not why it takes place with infinitely small rapidity.)

(_i_) The product evolves itself _ad infinitum_. In this evolution, therefore, nothing can happen, which is not already a product (synthesis), and which might not divide up into new factors, each of these again having its factors.

Thus even by an analysis pursued _ad infinitum_, we could never arrive at anything in nature which should be absolutely simple.

(_k_) If however we _suppose_ the evolution as completed, (although it _never_ can be completed,) still the evolution could not stop at anything which was a product, but only at the purely productive.

The question arises, whether a final, such that it is no longer a substrate, but the cause of all substrate, no longer a product, but absolutely productive—we will not say _occurs_, for that is unthinkable, but—can at least be proved in experience.

(_l_) Inasmuch as it bears the character of the unconditioned, it would have to exhibit itself as something, which, although itself not in space, is still the principle of all occupation of space.

What occupies space is not matter, for matter is the occupied space itself. That, therefore, which occupies space cannot be matter. Only that which is, is in space, not _being itself_.

It is self-evident that no positive external intuition is possible of that which _is_ not in space. It would therefore have to be capable of being exhibited negatively. This happens in the following manner:

That which is in space, is, as such, mechanically and chemically destructible. That which is not destructible either mechanically or chemically must therefore lie outside of space. But it is only the final ground of all quality that has anything of this nature; for although one quality may be extinguished by another, this can nevertheless only happen in a third product, C, for the formation and maintenance of which A and B, (the opposite factors of C,) must continue to act.

But this indestructible (somewhat), which is thinkable only as pure intensity, is, as the cause of all substrate, at the same time the principle of divisibility _ad infinitum_. (A body, divided _ad infinitum_ still occupies space in the same degree with its smallest part.)

That, therefore, which is purely productive without being a product, is but the final ground of quality. But every quality is a determinate one, whereas productivity is originally indeterminate. In the qualities, therefore, productivity appears as already retarded, and as it appears most original in them generally, it appears in them most originally retarded.

This is the point at which our mode of conception diverges from those of the currently so-called dynamical physics.

Our assertion, briefly stated, is this:—If the infinite evolution of nature were completed (which is impossible) it would separate up into original and simple actions, or, if we may so express ourselves, into simple productivities. Our assertion therefore is not: There are in nature such simple actions; but only, they are the ideal grounds of the explanation of quality. These _entelechies_ cannot actually be shown, they do not _exist_; we have not therefore to explain here anything more than is asserted, namely, that such original productivities must be _thought_ as the grounds of the explanation of all quality. This proof is as follows:

The affirmation that nothing which _is_ in space, that is, that nothing at all is mechanically simple, requires no demonstration. That, therefore, which is in reality simple, cannot be thought as in space, but must be thought as outside of space. But outside of space only pure intensity is thought. This idea of pure intensity is expressed by the idea of action. It is not the product of this action that is simple, but the action itself abstracted from the product, and it must be simple in order that the product may be divisible _ad infinitum_. For although the parts are near vanishing, the intensity must still remain. And this pure intensity is what, even in infinite divisibility, sustains the substrate.

If, therefore, the assertion that affirms something simple as the basis of the explanation of quality is atomistic, then our philosophy is atomistic. But, inasmuch as it places the simple in something that is only productive without being a product, it is _dynamical atomistics_.

This much is clear, that if we admit an absolute division of nature into its factors, the last (thing) that remains over, must be something, which absolutely defies all division, that is, the simple. But the simple can be thought only as dynamical, and as such it is not in space at all (it designates only what is thought as altogether outside of space-occupation); there is therefore no intuition of it possible, except through its product. In like manner there is no measure for it given but its product. For to pure thought it is the mere _origin_ of the product (as the point is only the origin of the line), in one word pure _entelechy_. But that which is known, not in itself, but only in its product, is known altogether empirically. If, therefore, every original quality, as quality (not as substrate, in which quality merely inheres), must be thought as pure intensity, pure action, then qualities generally are only the absolutely empirical in our knowledge of nature, of which no construction is possible, and in respect to which there remains nothing of the philosophy of nature, save the proof that they are the absolute limit of its construction.

The question in reference to the ground of quality posits the evolution of nature as completed, that is, it posits something merely thought, and therefore can be answered only by an ideal ground of explanation. This question adopts the stand-point of reflection (on the product), whereas genuine dynamics always remain on the stand-point of intuition.

It must here, however, be at once remarked that if the ground of the explanation of quality is conceived as an ideal one, the question only regards the explanations of quality, in so far as it is thought as absolute. There is no question, for instance, of quality, in so far as it shows itself in the dynamical process. For quality, so far as it is relative, there is certainly a [not merely ideal, but actually real] ground of explanation and determination; quality in that case is determined by its opposite, with which it is placed in conflict, and this antithesis is itself again determined by a higher antithesis, and so on back into infinity; so that, if this universal organization could dissolve itself, all matter likewise would sink back into dynamical inactivity, that is, into absolute defect of quality. (Quality is a higher power of matter, to which the latter elevates itself by reciprocity.) It is demonstrated in the sequel that the dynamical process is a limited one for each individual sphere; because it is only thereby that definite points of relation for the determination of quality arise. This limitation of the dynamical process, that is, the proper determination of quality, takes place by means of no force other than that by which the evolution is universally and absolutely limited, and this negative element is the only one in things that is indivisible, and mastered by nothing.—The absolute relativity of all quality may be shown from the electric relation of bodies, inasmuch as the same body that is positive with one is negative with another, and conversely. But we might now henceforth abide by the statement (which is also laid down in the Outlines): _All quality is electricity_, and conversely, _the electricity of a body is also its quality_, (for all difference of quality is equal to difference of electricity, and all [chemical] quality is reducible to electricity).—Everything that is sensible for us (sensible in the narrower acceptation of the term, as colors, taste, &c.), is doubtless sensible to us only _through_ electricity, and the only _immediately_ sensible (element) would then be electricity,[21] a conclusion to which the universal duality of every sense leads us independently, inasmuch as in Nature there is properly only one duality. In galvanism, sensibility, as a reagent, reduces all quality of bodies, for which it is a reagent to an original difference. All bodies which, in a chain, at all affect the sense of taste or that of sight, be their differences ever so great, are either alkaline or acid, excite a negative or positive shock, and here they always appear as active in a higher than the merely chemical power.

Quality considered as absolute is inconstructible, because quality generally is not anything absolute, and there is no other quality at all, save that which bodies show mutually in relation to each other, and all quantity is something in virtue of which the body is, so to speak, raised above itself.

All hitherto attempted construction of quality reduces itself to the two attempts; to express qualities by figures, and so, for each original quality, to assume a particular figure in Nature; or else, to express quality by analytical formulæ (in which the forces of attraction and repulsion supply the negative and positive magnitudes.) To convince oneself of the futility of this attempt, the shortest method is to appeal to the emptiness of the explanations to which it gives rise. Hence we limit ourselves here to the single remark, that through the construction of all matter out of the two fundamental forces, different degrees of density may indeed be constructed, but certainly never different qualities as qualities; for although all dynamical (qualitative) changes appear, in their lowest stage, as changes of the fundamental forces, yet we see at that stage only the product of the process—not the _process itself_—and those changes are _what require explanation_, and the ground of explanation must therefore certainly be sought in something higher.

The only possible ground of explanation for quality is an ideal one; because this ground itself presupposes something purely ideal. If any one inquire into the final ground of quality, he transports himself back to the starting point of Nature. But where is this starting point? and does not all quality consist in this, that matter is prevented by the general concatenation from reverting into its originality?

From the point at which reflection and intuition separate, a separation, be it remarked, which is possible only on the hypothesis of the evolutions being complete, physics divide into the two opposite directions, into which the two systems, the atomistic and the dynamical, have been divided.

The _dynamical_ system _denies_ the absolute evolution of Nature, and passes from Nature as synthesis (i. e. Nature as subject) to Nature as evolution (i. e. Nature as object); the atomistic system passes from the evolution, as the original, to Nature as synthesis; the former passes from the stand-point of intuition to that of reflection; the latter from the stand-point of reflection to that of intuition.

Both directions are equally possible. If the analysis only is right, then the synthesis must be capable of being found again through analysis, just as the analysis in its turn can be found through the synthesis. But whether the analysis is correct can be tested only by the fact that we can pass from it again to the synthesis. The synthesis therefore is, and continues, the absolutely presupposed.

The problems of the one system turn exactly round into those of the other; that which, in atomical physics, is the cause of the _composition_ of Nature is, in dynamical physics, _that which checks evolution_. The former explains the composition of Nature by the force of cohesion, whereby, however, no continuity is ever introduced into it; the latter, on the contrary, explains cohesion by the continuity of evolution. (All cohesion is originally only in the productivity.)

_Both systems set out from something purely ideal._ Absolute synthesis is as much purely _ideal_ as absolute analysis. The Real occurs only in Nature as _product_; but Nature is not product, either when thought as absolute involution or as absolute evolution; product is what is contained between the two extremes.

The first problem for both systems is to construct the product—i. e. that wherein those opposites become real. Both reckon with purely _ideal_ magnitudes so long as the product is not constructed: it is only in the _directions_ in which they accomplish this that they are opposed. Both systems, as far as they have to deal with merely ideal factors, have the same value, and the one forms the test of the other.—That which is concealed in the depths of productive Nature must be reflected as product in Nature as Nature, and thus the atomistic system must be the continual reflex of the dynamical. In the Outlines, of the two directions, that of atomistic physics has been chosen intentionally. It will contribute not a little to the understanding of our science, if we here demonstrate in the _productivity_ what was there shown in the _product_.

(_m_) _In the pure productivity of Nature there is absolutely nothing distinguishable except duality; it is only productivity dualized in itself that gives the product._

Inasmuch as the absolute productivity arrives only at producing _per se_, not at the producing of a determinate [somewhat], the tendency of Nature, in virtue of which product is arrived at, must be the _negative_ of productivity.

In Nature, in so far as it is real, there can no more be productivity without a product, than a product without productivity. Nature can only approximate to the two extremes, and it must be demonstrated _that_ it approximates to both.

(α) _Pure productivity passes originally into formlessness._

Wherever Nature loses itself in formlessness, productivity exhausts itself in it. (This is what we express when we talk of a becoming latent.)—Conversely, wherever the form predominates—i. e. wherever the productivity is _limited_—the productivity manifests itself; it appears, not as a (representable) product, but _as_ productivity, although passing over into one product, as in the phenomena of heat. (The idea of imponderables is only a symbolic one.)

(β) _If productivity passes into formlessness, then, objectively considered, it is the absolutely formless._

The boldness of the atomical system has been very imperfectly comprehended. The idea which prevails in it, of an absolutely formless [somewhat] everywhere incapable of manifestation as determinate matter, is nothing other than the symbol of nature approximating to productivity.—The nearer to productivity the nearer to formlessness.

(γ) _Productivity appears as productivity only when limits are set to it._