[19]. If only those warm panegyrists of empiricism, who exalt it at the expense of science, did not, true to the idea of empiricism, try to palm off upon us as empiricism their own judgments, and what they have put into nature, and imposed upon objects; for though many persons think they can talk about it, there is a great deal more belonging to it than many imagine—to eliminate purely the accomplished from Nature, and to state it with the same fidelity with which it has been eliminated.—Remark of the Original.
[20]. A traveller in Italy makes the remark that the whole history of the world may be demonstrated on the great obelisk at Rome; so, likewise, in every product of Nature. Every mineral body is a fragment of the annals of the earth. But what is the earth? Its history is interwoven with the history of the whole of Nature, and so passes from the fossil through the whole of inorganic and organic Nature, till it culminates in the history of the universe—one chain.—Remark of the Original.
[21]. Volta already asks, with reference to the affection of the senses by galvanism—“Might not the electric fluid be the immediate cause of all flavors? Might it not be the cause of sensation in all the other senses?”—Remark of the Original.
[22]. According to the foregoing experiments, it is at least not impossible to regard the phenomena of light and those of electricity as one, since in the prismatic spectrum the colors may at least be considered as opposites, and the white light, which regularly falls in the middle, be regarded as the indifference-point; and for reasons of analogy one is tempted to consider this construction of the phenomena of light as the real one.—Remark of the Original.
[23]. Hence wherever the antithesis is cancelled or deranged, the metamorphosis becomes irregular. For what is disease even but metamorphosis?—Remark of the Original.
[24]. From this point onwards, there are, as in the Outlines, additions in notes (similar to the few that have already been admitted into the text in brackets []). They are excerpted from a MS. copy of the author’s.
[25]. The first postulate of natural science is an antithesis in the pure identity of Nature. This antithesis must be thought quite purely, and not with any other substrate besides that of activity; for it is the condition of all substrate. The person who cannot think activity or opposition without a substrate, cannot philosophize at all. For all philosophizing goes only to the deduction of a substrate.
[26]. The phenomena of electricity show the scheme of nature oscillating between productivity and product. This condition of oscillation or change, attractive and repulsive force, is the real condition of formation.
[27]. For it is the only thing that is given us to derive all other things from.
[28]. The whole of the uncancelled antithesis of A is carried over to B. But again, it cannot entirely cancel itself in B, and is therefore carried over to C. The antithesis in C is therefore maintained by B, but only in so far as A maintains the antithesis which is the condition of B.