(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.