And—in order to close the circle at the point where it began—just as in organic nature, in the scale of sensibility, irritability, and formative instinct, the secret of the production of the whole of organic nature lies in each individual, so in the scale of magnetism, electricity, and chemical process, so far as it (the scale) can be distinguished in the individual body, is to be found the secret of the production of Nature from itself [of the whole of Nature[[52]]].
C.
We have now approached nearer the solution of our problem, which was: To reduce the construction of organic and inorganic nature to a common expression.
Inorganic nature is the product of the first power, organic nature of the second[[53]]—(this was demonstrated above; it will soon appear that the latter is the product of a still higher power)—hence the latter, in view of the former, appears contingent; the former, in view of the latter, necessary. Inorganic nature can take its origin from simple factors, organic nature only from products, which again become factors. Hence an inorganic nature generally will appear as having been from all eternity, the organic nature as originated.
In the organic nature, indifference can never be arrived at in the same way in which it is arrived at in inorganic nature, because life consists in nothing more than a continual prevention of the attainment of indifference By organization, matter—which has already been composed for the second time by the chemical process—is once more thrown back to the initial point of formation (the circle above described is again opened); it is no wonder that matter always thrown back again into formation at last returns as a perfect product. The same stages, through which the production of Nature originally passes, are also passed through by the production of the organic product; only that the latter, even in the first stage, at least begins with products of the simple power.—Organic production also begins with limitation, not of the primary productivity, but of the productivity of a product; organic formation also takes place through the change of expansion and contraction, just as primary formation does; but in this case it is a change taking place, not in the simple productivity, but in the compound. But there is all this, too, in the chemical process,[[54]] and yet in the chemical process indifference is attained. The vital process, therefore, must again be a higher power of the chemical; and if the scheme that lies at the base of the latter is duplicity, the scheme of the former will of necessity be triplicity [the former will be a process of the third power]. But the scheme of triplicity is [in reality] that [the fundamental scheme] of the galvanic process (Ritter’s Demonstration, &c., p. 172); therefore the galvanic process (or the process of irritation) stands a power higher than the chemical, and the third element, which the latter lacks and the former has, prevents indifference from being arrived at in the organic product.[[55]] As irritation does not allow indifference to be arrived at in the individual product, and as the antithesis is still there (for the primary antithesis still pursues us),[[56]] there remains for nature no alternative but separation of the factors in different products.[[57]] The formation of the individual product, for that very reason, cannot be a completed formation, and the product can never cease to be productive.[[58]] The contradiction in Nature is this, that the product must be productive [i. e. a product of the third power], and that, notwithstanding, the product, as a product of the third power, must pass over into indifference.[[59]] This contradiction Nature tries to solve by mediating indifference itself through productivity, but even this does not succeed—for the act of productivity is only the kindling spark of a new process of irritation; the product of productivity is a new productivity. Into this as its product the productivity of the individual now indeed passes over; the individual, therefore, ceases more rapidly or slowly to be productive, and Nature reaches the indifference-point with it only after the latter has got down to a product of the second power.[[60]]