Since the product, which we have deduced as the most primary, drives us to a side of nature that is opposed to it, it is clear that our construction of the origin of a product generally is incomplete, and that we have not yet, by a long way, satisfied our problem; (the problem of all science is to construct the origin of a fixed product.)
A productive product, as such, can subsist only under the influence of external forces, because it is only thereby that productivity is interrupted—prevented from being extinguished in the product. For these external forces there must now again be a particular sphere; those forces must lie in a world which is not productive. But that world, for this very reason, would be a world fixed and undetermined in every respect. The problem—how a product in nature is arrived at—has therefore received a one-sided solution by all that has preceded. “The product is checked by dualization of the productivity at every single step of development.” But this is true only for the productive product, whereas we are here treating of a non-productive product.
The contradiction which meets us here can be solved only by the finding of a general expression for the construction of a product generally, (regardless of whether it is productive or has ceased to be so).
Since the existence of a world, that is not productive (inorganic) is in the first instance merely postulated, in order to explain the productive one, so its conditions can be laid down only hypothetically, and as we do not in the first instance know it at all except from its opposition to the productive, those conditions likewise must be deduced only from this opposition. From this it is of course clear,—what is also referred to in the Outlines—that this second section, as well as the first, contains throughout merely hypothetical truth, since neither organic nor inorganic nature is explained without our having reduced the construction of the two to a common expression, which, however, is possible only through the synthetic part.—This must lead to the highest and most general principles for the construction of a nature generally; hence we must refer the reader who is concerned about a knowledge of our system altogether to that part. The hypothetical deduction of an inorganic world and its conditions we may pass over here all the more readily, that they are sufficiently detailed in the Outlines, and hasten to the most general and the highest problem of our science.
The most general problem of speculative physics may now be expressed thus: To reduce the construction of organic and inorganic products to a common expression.
We can state only the main principles of such a solution, and of these, for the most part, only such as have not been completely educed in the Outlines themselves—(3d principal section.)
A.
Here at the very beginning we lay down the principle that as the organic product is the product in the second power, the ORGANIC construction of the product must be, at least, the sensuous image of the ORIGINAL construction of all product.