(o) In the solution of the problem itself, we shall continue, in the first instance, in the direction hitherto taken, without knowing where it may lead us.
There are individual products brought into nature; but in these products productivity, as productivity, is held to be still always distinguishable. Productivity has not yet absolutely passed over into product. The subsistence of the product is supposed to be a continual self-reproduction.
The problem arises: By what is this absolute transition—exhaustion of the productivity in the product—prevented? or by what does its subsistence become a continual self-reproduction?
It is absolutely unthinkable how the activity that everywhere tends towards a product is prevented from going over into it entirely, unless that transition is prevented by external influences, and the product, if it is to subsist, is compelled at every step to reproduce itself anew.
Up to this point, however, no trace has been discovered of a cause opposed to the product (to organic nature). Such a cause can, therefore, at present, only be postulated. We thought we saw the whole of nature exhaust itself in that product, and it is only here that we remark, that in order to comprehend such product, something else must be presupposed, and a new antithesis must come into nature.
Nature has hitherto been for us absolute identity in duplicity; here we come upon an antithesis that must again take place within the other. This antithesis must be capable of being shown in the deduced product itself, if it is capable of being deduced at all.
The deduced product is an activity directed outwards; this cannot be distinguished as such without an activity directed inwards from without, (i. e. directed upon itself,) and this activity, on the other hand, cannot be thought, unless it is pressed back (reflected) from without.
In the opposite directions, which arise through this antithesis lies the principle for the construction of all the phenomena of life—on the suppression of those opposite directions, life remains over, either as absolute activity or absolute receptivity, since it is possible only as the perfect inter-determination of receptivity and activity.
We therefore refer the reader to the Outlines themselves, and merely call his attention to the higher stage of construction which we have here reached.
We have above (g) explained the origin of a product generally by a struggle of nature against the original point of check, whereby this point is raised to a full sphere, and thus receives permanence. Here, since we are deducing a struggle of external nature, not against a mere point, but against a product, the first construction rises for us to a second power, as it were,—we have a double product, and thus it might well be shown in the sequel that organic nature generally is only the higher power of the inorganic, and that it rises above the latter for the very reason that in it even that which was already product again becomes product.