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.)