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E. KROEGER. WITH A PREFACE BY WILLIAM T. HARRIS, PROFESSOR OF THE SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY, CONCORD, MASS. ; EDITOR OF THE "journal of SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHV," ETC. LONDON: TRUBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL. 1889. \All rights reserved^ PREFACE. If modern philosophy goes "back to Kant" at the present time, it is certain to go forward to Fichte again after a due interval. Kant made a new epoch in the history of philosophy by exploring the subjective factor of cognition. It was obvious to him that knowledge is a product of two factors: the object entering as one factor and the con- stitution of the knowing subject forming the other. He suggested that in order to solve the problems of philo- sophy it is necessary to make a careful exploration of the subjective factor of knowledge. If we can learn to recognize the subjective coefficient in our experience — in other words, if we can make allowance for what the mind itself adds to the object in the process of knowing it — we are in a condition to know the object in its purity, or as it is in itself. On this ground the attempt of Kant and his followers seems promising. They essayed to take a complete in- ventory of the forms that belong to the constitution of the mind. Long practice in this kind of investigation gave them such power of introspection that for the first time in the history of human thought psychology began to be a real science. We all remember, if we have studied the writings of this school of philosophers, how A IV PREFACE. completely unintelligible their language seemed at first. There were words and an apparent statement of pro- gressive insights, but we could not understand even the words, much less verify in our own introspection the progressive insights : we had not any sufficient power of sustained introspection or inward observation. We had rarely ever observed other objects than external ones. We had used our powers of sense-perception only, and had reflected only on their data. When we had con- templated spiritual or mental facts we had done so in a symbolical mode of thinking. We had used mental pictures and images, and thus objectified and material- ized the operations of the mind and contemplated them as things existing in space. By the study of the Kantian writings we came to acquire by degrees the new faculties of introspection. We acquired some power of seeing internal processes without the aid of mental pictures and images. Then the words and apparent statements of progressive insights began to have precise and reasonable meaning to us, and a new realm of knowledge arose before our souls with continually increasing clearness. Its clearness in fact was of such a character that all previous knowledge seemed quite dim in comparison. We found ourselves learning to see truths that are universal and necessary — - " apodictic," as Kant calls them. Previous views of truth had not seemed exhaustive. Existence might be other- wise, or perhaps was otherwise, to a different spectator. But now with the newly acquired power of introspection we could see glimpses of the final and exhaustive truth. We felt it now to be in our power to make indefinite pro- gress in this new inventory of ihe world. This progress consists in a descent from the universal to the particular. PREFACE. V Hence division and analysis brought us to insights more closely related to the world of external observation. All the forms of the mind within discovered by this power of introspection are necessary forms of existence because they are logical conditions of being. If space and time are forms- of the perceiving mind, they are also logical conditions of the existence of the world that it perceives. The laws of space and time as formulated in mathematics are universal and necessary conditions in the world of matter and motion. We shall never dis- cover a plane triangle with the sum of its angles greater or less than two right angles. The knowledge of the structure of mind is not a mere subjective knowledge of "forms of the mind," but also a knowledge of the condi- tions of existence. It is only a superficial glance at the doctrines of Kant that leads one to believe that he supposes time and space to be forms of subjective mind and not conditions of what we call " existence." It is the illusion of his technical expressions that deceives us. When we have learned how to see his facts of con- sciousness by our newly acquired power of introspection, we see that he does not deny validity to time and space in the world of experience, but on the contrary affirms their unconditional validity there, as necessary conditions of existence to all things and events. If there is a thing that is not conditioned by time and space, it is not known to us and cannot possibly enter our experience. This sustained power of introspection, which makes Kant's expositions so difficult to the beginner, is surpassed by the acumen of Fichte. Compared with the insight of Fichte, Kant's power of introspection seems to reach internal facts without their logical relations, while Fichte sees logical relations and can deduce one fact from VI PREFACE. another. He has in short discovered Method — and can proceed from one step to another, without beginning anew. If it was found difficult to understand Kant and verify his inventory of facts of introspection, it is still more difficult to follow Fichte's deductions, involving as they do not only those recondite facts, but also a still more recondite reflection upon their nature. The facts of consciousness are not facts of mere being — being as opposed to activity — but they are all facts of activity as Fichte sees clearly. To think an activity distinctly involves a compound act of the mind, while the thought of mere being seems to be simple in comparison. The mental effort to perceive an activity is therefore neces- sarily a process comprehending many elemental acts. But the result is a logical whole, and the elements are seen to have truth not in their isolation, but in their relation — in their reciprocal unity. Here we see the germ of the discovery of the dialectic, that becomes so important in the system of Hegel. If an insight of introspection demands a logical procedure through general terms of thought, the movement is a dialectic one and may be regarded as an objective movement — a movement of the thing itself (Sache selbst). For the thought of it requires this movement, and it is not our arbitrary reflection on it that connects it with others. But this claim for the dialectic has proved the bane of the Hegelian philosophy. It has led to a sort of hypostasis of the " dialectic method " — making it a kind of developing energy in the world, something like the principle of evolution which science has formulated. It does not require any real insight to think with such a principle of dialectic. To see this PREFACE. VII dialectic movement does not require an exercise of this wonderful new power of introspection which we have described as revealed in the writings of Kant and Fichte. The true dialectic is transformed into the far less subtle intellectual power of thinking by the aid of mental images and pictures. The dialectic as a power of tran- scendental deduction is entirely wanting to it. Having thus degenerated, the true remedy is to go "back to Kant," and thenceforward to Fichte, and re- vive this new faculty of introspection that can behold the necessary sequence of ideas, which is the true dialectic. In these considerations I have essayed to indicate the true position of Fichte. He is the greatest genius in psychology to be found in the history of philosophy. This does not of course claim for him the highest place in all science nor in all philosophy. For there is un- doubtedly much else in human knowledge than psycho- logy, even if psychology is as fundamental as it is supposed to be. There is ontology and the philosophy of nature ; the philosophy of history, of aesthetic art and literature ; of ethics, of the social organism, of laws and constitutions ; of language, and of many more depart- ments of human life. All these may find or must find their principles of explanation in psychology, but they are not psychology. The ignorance of Kant and Fichte in the fields of the history of philosophy, though it is perfectly accounted for by the contempt for former systems of philosophy with which an insight into a new method had filled them — this ignorance of the history of Philosophy is the occa- sion of what we must regard as the chief defects in their application of philosophy to other departments. Looked at from the standpoint of the Instory of all Vlll PREFACE. European philosophy, the Kantian movement shows its true significance. There are only two original philo- sophic movements in history — the Greek and the German. The Greek has an ontological principle and the German a psychological one. The former considers the neces- sary form of being, while the latter sees the necessary element of thought. Plato finds that true being is a totality, independent and self-active. He names it Idea. An idea has all its potentialities realized, and hence it is not a changing somewhat nor a becoming. It is not dependent on others. Strictly considered, every dependent being must be a part of an independent being. Aristotle has the same thought, but gives it a different technical designa- tion. He calls true being entelechy. This too is wholly real, having no unrealized potentiality (SuVa/xts) or matter (vXj?). It is all form (eiSos). Form means self-activity, and he calls this active reason. Ontology when completed arrives at pure activity in the form of Absolute Reason as the explanation of the world, Br.t ontology does not and cannot demonstrate its method or subjective procedure. Hence it is possible to attack it from the standpoint of scepticism. Scep- ticism may ask : how do you know your " true being " ? Or it may go farther and attempt to demonstrate our subjective incapacity to know such true being if it really exists. This scepticism is evidently founded on intro- spection, and it marks the transition from the objec- tive attitude of ontology to the subjective attitude of psychology. The main movement in the atiack on Greek ontology takes the form of the doctrine of Nominalism, the doctrine that universal ideas are factitious unities or PREFACE.' IX mere subjective devices of classification, and that they have no objective being corresponding to them. This movement reaches its culmination in the philosophy of Hume. This intrepid thinker draws out its extreme con- sequences and denies both Causality and the identity of the Ego, as a self transcending its stream of conscious states. At this point in history begins the German movement inaugurated by Kant. German philosophy has the task of exploring the subjective field exhaustively. Sceptic- ism had explored it partially. Kant and Fichte com- plete this subjective inventory of facts and processes of consciousness ; SchelHng and Hegel compare the results with those of the old philosophy based on Greek ontology and demonstrate their substantial identity. The net outcome is the same in both. Psychology presupposes an absolute ego identical with Aristotle's purely active reason. (Scholasticism understood this actus purus to be God.) In Fichte's system we may see all the steps of de- monstrating this astonishing result. Moreover, we may see in his various works all the stages of a consciousness awakening to realize the true significance of the con- sequences that he derived from his own philosophy. This is a strange phenomenon in the history of philosophy. We are surprised to see a philosopher unconscious of the consequences of his own system. Kant v/as vividly conscious of his deductions, but he was not aware that there was a second series of deduc- tions to be made from his system. Fichte discovered this second series, and united into one whole the critique of Pure Reason, and the critique of Practical Reason. He showed how the fundamental principle ot conscious- X PREFACE. ness — " the ego is the ego " — unfolded into two principles, one of which is theoretical and leads to the " Pure Reason," while the other is a principle of the will, or *' practical reason." But this second series (Fichte's) of deductions or consequences from the first series (Kant's) gave rise to a third series of deductions or consequences ; namely, a series of inferences as to the Absolute Ego or First Prin- ciple presupposed by the Science of Knowledge. Fichte gradually became conscious of this third series of deduc- tions, making continual progress as long as he lived. The question whether Fichte changed his system or not has been much discussed in recent years. If a change of system means a repudiation of his earlier system, there was no change on the part of Fichte. But if the progressive discovery of a further series of consequences flowing from his Science of Knowledge is a change, then a change cannot be denied. Fichte con- tinued to bring out '' new expositions " of his system until his death. I count eleven of these (and have named them below). Now these new expositions will be found to be occasioned by his own progress in dis- covering the ontological consequences of his system. He felt impelled to make these repeated expositions in order to absorb those consequences into the Science of Knowledge itself. His first attempt in this direction produced the remarkable exposition of 1797, published in the " Philosophisches Journal" (vol. vii. 1797). In this he had begun to unfold more concretely what had been vaguely contained in the non-ego and in the general or absolute ego. He began to speak frequently of " exist- ence for itself," " Absolute ego as absolute form of know- ledge," "absolute being," etc. In the episode that PREFACE. XI soon followed — the accusation against him for atheism — we find that he had been led by his impulse towards ontology to state prematurely his idea of God as a moral world- order. The reader of the present work may turn to " The Doctrine of Religion" (in the excellent translation of Dr. William Smith, published by Messrs. Triibner & Co.) for Fichte's most advanced conclusions in ontology. The system is the same as the Science of Knowledge, but in the Doctrine of Religion Fichte reveals to us a nearly complete third system of deductions founded on the Science of Knowledge. This third system is an ontology derived from " critical " psychology (the word " critical " is used to mean founded on the doctrine of Kant's Critiques) and in harmony with the ontology of Plato, Aristotle, and St. Thomas Aquinas. Fichte found the finite ego necessarily limited by the non-ego in order to produce consciousness. God there- fore, he had at first reasoned, cannot be a conscious ego because He cannot have a not-me like man. But in his Science of Knowledge he showed how the ego may have itself for object and become self-conscious by knowing its own nature as expounded in that science. So too in the practical part, and in the sciences of Morals and Rights he showed again how the ego may have the Absolute for its object and become conscious of its absolute self. This at least was the true logical con- sequence, and it was deduced in Hegel's system. Had Fichte lived to old age it is likely that he would have fully recognized this consequence to b'^ system. It was Plato's doctrine of the Logos or eternally begotten Word that provided for the consciousness of God — who must behold himself in an eternal not-me that is likewise XU PREFACE. an Ego or independent Person. God is not limited by his not-me or object, but He is reflected by it. For his not-me is himself as self-object, and an independent Person, and yet one with Him. This insight into the unity of opposites through reflection is Hegel's. It was really implied, though not here fully expressed, in Fichte's dialectic. Because there is no end to the dialectic movement forward to new antitheses unless the system comes to an antithesis in which the first term is perfectly reflected by its opposite. On the whole, the peculiarity of Fichte's expositions — as contrasted with the general significance of his system above considered — is his insight into free activity, spontaneity, — the being which is an essential activity rather than activity which depends on a being. For the ego is not unless it acts — it is a pure activity without a substratum of being, but its activity furnishes a substra- tum of being. Quiescent being cannot be a substrate, but requires or presupposes a substrate of pure activity. In a letter to Reinhold, cited by Professor Kuno Fischer (Ge- schichte der neuern Philosophie, Bd. V. s. 453), Fichte says — "My system is from beginning to end only an analysis of the idea of freedom." The beginner who wishes to increase his powers of mind by adding a new faculty — the faculty of seeing pure activity — to his already existent faculty of seeing external being and forming mental images or pictures of it — will not grudge the labour necessary to master this difficult work of Fichte. To him who studies a philosophical book only to store his memory with dogmatical con- clusions, Fichte's works are apt to prove sterile. But Fichte can teach him, if he will do some deep thinking, how to behold at first hand those subtle processes of the PREFACE. XIU mind which escape all ordinary perception, and are only a matter of hearsay to those who dwell in external intui- tion and the understanding. " To writers of the English school," says Professor Adamson in his very able work on Fichte in the "Philosophical Classics for English Readers" (published by William Blackwood & Sons), *' the restriction of philosophical inquiry to experience has always meant that phenomena of inner and outer life are known in the same way, and that beyond the knowledge thus obtained there is nothing standing in need of in- vestigation or capable of being investigated. 'Psychology,' says Huxley, 'differs from physical science only in the nature of its subject-matter, and not in its method of in- vestigation. ... It is not patting the matter too strongly to say that the categorical rejection of this psychological method is the very essence of critical philosophy." Mr. Kroeger, the translator of the present work, commended the Science of Knowledge to the public in these words : " The few students whom this work may interest I would beg not to be discouraged by any possible failure to comprehend it at its first, second, or even third reading The Science of Knowledge is not a book to read, but a work to study, as you would study the science of the higher mathematics, page by page, and year after year. Five or ten years may be needed to get full possession of it ; but he who has possession of it has possession of all sciences." Of the present work Mr. Kroeger said : " I omitted all those sentences and paragraphs which I considered out of place in a book presentation — though probably very much in place in a lecture presentation [the work was printed directly from the lectures given at Jena]; and I added the whole of the second portion of the theo- XIV PREFACE. retical part which in the German edition is published as a separate work, but which really belongs where I have placed it — additions and omissions which, in my judg- ment, make my English version of the Science of Knowedge of 1794 much superior to the German original." In order to make clear what the "additions and omissions," alluded to by Mr. Kroeger, are, I give here a general statement of the contents of this work. This translation contains : I. Introduction. Concerning the conception of the Science of Knowledge generally (pp. 11-60). This is a translation of Fichte's *' Ueber den Begriff der Wissen- schaftslehre oder der sogenannten Philosophic." Weimar, 1794. It was written as a sort of programme or state- ment of his point of view to be read by his hearers preparatory to his course of lectures at Jena, just before entering upon the duties of his professorship. Its fitness as an introduction here is obvious. II. Fundamental Principles of the whole Science of Knowledge (pp. 61—331, except pp. 189-255, which contains the treatise described under III,, below)* This is the translation of Fichte's first course of lectures, given at Jena in 1794, and printed while the lectures were in progress. Its title was " Grundlage der gesam.mten Wissenschaftslehre. Als Handschrift fuer seine Zuhoerer." Jena, 1795. III. Second part of the Theoretical Part of the Science of Knowledge (pp. 189-255). The title of this work, published separately, was "Grundriss des Eigenthuem- lichen der Wissenchaftslehre in Ruecksicht auf das theoretische Vermoegen. Als Handschrift fuer seine Zuhoerer." Jena, 1795. This work completes with great PREFACE. XV minuteness the theoretical deduction, and, as Mr. Kroeger said, belongs in this place. IV. The Dignity of Man : Speech delivered by Fichte at the close of his first course of lectures on the Science of Knowledge. This is printed on pages 331-336. Its original title is " Ueber die Wuerde des Menschen. Beim Schluss seiner philosophischen Vorlesungen gespro- chen," 1794. Its great importance is due to the fact that Fichte gives hints in it of the ontological views that he developed in later expositions. V. The Religious Significance of the Science of Know- ledge (pp. 338-377). This is an appendix containing fragments from Fichte's writings in defence of his system against the charge of atheism. They are found in the polemical writings written early in 1799 and left in- complete, but published only in the complete edition of his works after his death, under the title, " Rueckerin- nerungen, Antworten, Fragen. Fine Schrift die den Streitpunkt genau anzugeben bestimmt ist, und auf welche jeder, der in dem neulich entstandenen Streite ueber die Lehre von Gott mitsprechen will, sich einzu- lassen hat oder ausserdem abzuweisen ist." We have seen that Fichte wrote out many expositions of his Theory of Knowledge. His wonderful originality is manifested in the ever fresh devices of technique and illustration, by which he strove to make clear his subtle insights into the operations of mental activity. The following are the titles and dates of these exposi- tions : — 1. The exposition in the present volume described above under " II." and " III." 1794, 1795- 2. Versuch einer neuen Darstellung der W.L. (Wis- senschaitslehre ). Published in the " Philosophisches XVI PREFACE. Journal," edited by Fichte and Niethammer, vol. vii. 1795. This was translated by Mr. Kroeger and published in the "Journal of Speculative Philosophy," St. Louis, 1869. 3. Die Bestimmung des Menschen. Berlin^ 1800. ("The Vocation of Man.") This is the most popular and impressive of all the expositions of the Science of Knowledge and the least technical, though as profound as any. A translation is contained in Johann Gottlieb Fichte's Popular Works, with a Memoir, by William Smith, LL.D. London, Triibner & Co., 1873. 4. Die Anweisungen zum seligen Leben, cder auch die Religionslehre. Berlin, 1806. A course of lectures on the Way to a Blessed Life, or the Doctrine of Religion. For a good English translation see the work by Dr. Smith, above referred to. I include this among the expositions of the Science of Knowledge, because in laying down the grounds for religion Fichte was obliged to state the fundamental grounds of his system. 5. Darstellung der W.L. aus dem Jahre 1801. Printed in 1845 fro™ the (till then) unpublished manuscript. 6. Die W.L. 1804. The lectures of 1804 printed in the posthumous (nachgelassene) works. 7. Die W.L. in ihrem allgemeinen Umrisse. Berlin, 1810. Of this wonderful outline of Fichte's W.L. as related to the doctrine of the Absolute, there is a trans- lation by Dr. Smith in the second volume of Fichte's Popular Works as published by John Chapman; Lon- don, 1849. Fichte treats the system of Knowledge after the manner that the doctrine of the Logos is treated by the Platonists. It is a brief summary of the doctrine expounded in the Way to a Blessed Life (see No. 4 above). 8. Die Thatsachen dec Bewusstseyns, Vorlesungen PREFACE. XVU gehalten an der Universitaet zu Berlin in Winter- halbjahr iSio-iSii. "The Facts of Consciousness," printed in 1817. An English translation of this work, by Mr. Kroeger, was printed in the '' Journal of Specu- lative Philosophy," in volumes v., vi., vii., xvii. and xviii* (years 1871, 1872, 1S73, 18S3, 1884). This work might perhaps be classed more appropriately with the introduc- tions to the Science of Knowledge given below. 9. Die W.L. vorgetragen im Jahre 181 2, Lectures published in the posthumous works. ' 10. Die W.L. vorgetragen im Fruehjahr 1813. Lec- tures delivered in the Spring of 181 3 and left incomplete on the outbreak of the war (vol. ii. of the posthumous works). 11. Die Thatsachen des Eewusstseyns, vorgetragen zu Anfang des Jahres 18 13. " Facts of Consciousness : " lectures delivered early in 18 13, published in the posthu- mous works. The " Facts of Consciousness " goes over the imme- diate data for which the W.L. finds a ground in the ego. But Fichte could not help interpreting these [data in the process of inventorying them. Hence we are justified in placing these two expositions (No, 7 and No.l 9) here as versions of the W.L. They furnish interesting views of the W.L. from an opposite standpoint — i.e., they show us the W.L. approached from the ordinary consciousness whidi looks upon its objects as facts and things. Besides these expositions of the Theory of Knowledge in its essentials, there are several writings that are called *' Introductions " (Einleitungen), in which Fichte under- took to lead the reader up to the conviction in which the Theory of Knowledge takes its root. These works are : — -I. The Introduction to the present work already XVlll PREFACE. named above, a work not prefixed to the W.L. by Fichte himself, but placed in the hands of his students at the beginning. 2. Erste Einleitung in die W.L. This was printed in the " Philosophische Journal," vol. v, 1797. (Translated by Mr. Kroeger and printed in the Jour. Spec. Phil. 1867.) 3. Zweite Einleitung in die W.L. fuer Leser die schon ein philosophisches System haben. " Second intro- duction to the Theory of Knowledge for readers who already have a philosophical system." Printed in the " Philosophisches Journal," vols. v. and vi. 1797. (Trans- lated by Mr. Kroeger and printed in the Jour. Spec. Phil, for 1867.) 4. Sonnenklarer Bericht an das groessere Publicum ueber das eigentliche Wesen der neuesten Philosophic. Ein Versuch die Leser zum Verstehen zu zwingen. BerUn, 1801. "A sun-clear statement to the larger public concerning the nature of the most recent philo- sophy. An attempt to compel the reader to understand it." (Translated by Mr. Kroeger and published in Jour. Spec. Phil. 1868.) 5. Bericht ueber den Begriff der W.L. und die bishe- rigen Schicksale derselben. " A statement of the idea of the W.L. and the history of its reception up to this time." Written in 1806 and published in 1834. (Eng- lish translation by Mr. Kroeger in the Jour. Spec. Phil., vols. xii. and xiii. 1878-79.) 6. Einleitungsvorlesungen in die W.L. " Lectures introductory to the Theory of Knowledge," delivered in the autumn of 1813 at the University of Berlin, and pub- lished in 1843. Here are eleven expositions of the Science of Know- \ PREFACE. XIX ledge and six introductions to it, left us by the author of the system. One might suppose at first that this number was due to the fact that Fichte could not satisfy himself as to the requirements of his description of its necessary steps. But, as I have already suggested above,, the gradual unfolding in his mind of the ontologica consequences of his system may have been one of the causes of this impulse to modify the exposition at each new course of Lectures. Another cause was doubtless this : He saw so clearly the logical necessity of his system that he could not understand the difficulties which his students found in following him. Hence he described again and again the characteristics so vividly and originally conceived whenever he came to lecture anew upon his theme. In order to assist the reader, I add the following hints as to the development of the thought of this work, referring him, if he wishes to compare his progress in gaining an insight into Fichte's argument with the re-statements of the thought by others, to the work of Professor Adamson above cited, and to the able exposi- tion of the Science of Knov/ledge by Professor C. C Everett (in Griggs & Co.'s "German Philosophical Classics," Chicago, 1884). Given first the fact of consciousness, I am I. The ego posits itself — it is through its own activity. Instead ot being a " fact" (German ThatsacJie means a deed-thing), Fichte would call this fundamental act of consciousness a Deed-act (" That-Handlung " instead of " Thatsache "), because it is not a thing or fact but an act — its very being is an act. Much of the obscurity of Fichte'r, Science of Knowledge is due to this distinction. Fichte always bears in mind that the being of the ego is its B XX PREFACE. activity, anu it is not a being which has activity only as a transient state of ic. Its activity is its immanent state or its very essence. Cease action, cease consciousness ; the self ceases to be for itself and thus ceases to be. Hence Fichte often in his expositions opposes existence or Being to the Ego, calling the latter freedom. The being of the deed-act is pure activity, while the existence that we learn to know in the world seems to be a quiescent being which takes on movement or activity as a transient state that does not affect its being. Here is found the chief ground of Fichte's seeming atheism. The ego is not an existence, but something more funda- mental — it posits existence. So it might be said the Absolute Ego or God is not existence, but the pure activity that posits all existence. But this denial of exist- ence to God misleads the reader if he has not care- fully noted the distinction. Hegel saw that existence and being are simply phases of this pure activity that arise through its relation to itself. Hence Hegel defined existence and being as the phase of self-relation of the pure activity, while change, difference, causality, force and the like categories are the phase of self-negation of the same principle of pure activity. Hence, too, Hegel would re-affirm Plato's doctrine that external existences are in a process of becoming, and are not real being, but a mixture of being and non-being. The self is a true being because one with itself— that is to say, the identity of subject and object. Fichte in the Introduction (pp. 1-60, and on pp. 63-98 of the main exposition) finds the fundamental basis of all consciousness to be the three laws of identity, distinction and limitation— (a) the ego is identical with PREFACE. XXI the ego; {b) the non-ego is not identical with the ego; ic) the ego limits the non-ego and is limited by the non-ego. The first and second principles {a and b) express only partially the fact of consciousness, but the third nearly expresses the whole. Every act of consciousness gives us the fact of mental limitation of the ego and non-ego. But it is necessary to add : " Consciousness is a whole activity that distinguishes within itself a me that limits itself by a not-me and hence is limited by a not-me." This closes the Introduction. In the third principle we have two opposite principles given us to unfold and explain (see p. 104). The first part of the Science of Knowledge must explain the principle, "the ego is limited or determined by the non-ego ; " while the second part must explain the other principle, " the non-ego is limited by the ego." The first part will be the theo- retical part, or the science of cognition, while the second part will be the practical part, the science of the will. Kant's second critique was called that of the " Practical Reason," and Fichte, we see, is able to unite it in one science with the critique of Pure Reason by deducing both from the primitive act of consciousness — the " deed- act." But the theoretical part is twofold (see p. 106). In the first part of this theoretical part (pp. 108-187) we must consider how " the non-ego determines the ego," while in the second part of the theoretical part (pp. 1S9— 255) we must consider that it is the ego that determines this limitation of itself by the non-ego, and therefore is a pure activity as the ground of its passivity. By this he explains the faculties of cognition. This will lead us directly to the practical part of the science. (This second XXU PREFACE. portion of the theoretical part of the science is the work inserted by Mr. Kroeger. It was published as a separate work under the title, " A Sketch of the peculiar Doctrine of the Science of Knowledge on the subject of the Theoretic Faculty"). In the first portion of the theoretical part of the science Fichte grounds two views of nature : («) the materialistic and fatalistic view that holds the mind to be a product of nature and denies free-will (a view that is given with surpassing eloquence in the " Vocation of Man," referred to above; {p) the idealistic view, that denies objective existence and makes the ego respon- sible for all that it sees. The second portion of the theoretical part of the science unfolds the system of critical idealism, which shows how time and space and sense-perception arise. Materialism, idealism, and critical idealism cover the entire ground of the first or theoretical part of the science. Fichte considers idealism to be as one-sided as the materialism that it opposes, and hence he deduces as the correct view the critical position of Kant. The true point of view should include both idealism and realism, and limit them each through the other, after the manner of the third general principle (that of reciprocal limitation of the ego and non-ego). In the critical idealism that unites the two partial views, we see the ego as a whole opposed to the particular ego. We see then that the non-ego is not the opposite of the universal ego, but only of the particular ego. Here we arrive at the practical part of the science. In the practical part of the science we have also two portions, the first of which shows that the pure self- activity of the ego necessitates a counter self-activity on the part of the non-ego. While the second portion of PREFACE, XXUl the theoretical part deduced sense-perception, sensation, time, and space, the second portion of the practical part deduces impulse, feeUng, and tlie quaUties of things. It will be seen that the moral will is the highest principle reached in the system. Man's vocation is to realize an infinite ideal. He must transform the non-ego into his ideal. He is immortal in consequence of this destiny. William T. Harris. CoNXORD, Massachusetts, iSSS. CONTENTS. I, INTRODUCTION : CONCERNING THE CONCEP- TION OF THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE GENERALLY (pp. 11-60). A. Part First of Introduction (pp. 11-30). PAGE Concerning the Conception of the Science of Knowledge generally 11 §1. Hypothetical Conception of this Science ... II § 2. Explanation of the Conception of the Science of Know- ledge 19 (a) It is to be a Science of Science generally, and have a Systematic Form, and therefore have one Funda- mental Principle 20 {d) The Science of Knowledge is a Science, and there- fore has one Fundamental Principle which cannot be proven in it . . • • • • .21 CONTENTS. PAGE 1. Either there is no immediate Certainty and our know- ledge is Derivative, ad infinitum .... 27 2. Or our knowledge consists of Finite Series ... 28 3. Or there must be a highest and first Fundamental Principle as the basis of a complete system of the Human Mind 29 B. Part Second of Introduction (pp. 31-60) . 31 § 3. Development of the Conception of the Science of Knowledge ; its four questions — treated in §§ 4-7 . 31 § 4. First question : In how far can the Science of Know- ledge be sure of having exhausted Human Knowledge generally? . * • 33 § 5. What is the limit which separates the Science of Knowledge from the particular Sciences ? • • 39 § 6. How is the Science of Knowledge related to Logic ? . 44 (a) Logic based on Science of Knowledge, and not the latter on the former ...... 46 {b) Principle of Identity based on the Identity of the Ego, and not the contrary 47 § 7. How is the Science of Knowledge as Science related to its Object ?....•••« 49 CONTENTS, 3 II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF THE WHOLE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE (pp. 61-331, except pp. 189-285). THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. L Fundamental Principles of the whole Science § I. First and ab?olutely unconditioned Fundamental Prin clple ......•• Ilhistratioji : The Ego posits originally its own beinj Remarks: Kant, Reinhold, and Spinoza, on the Ego § 2. Second, and in regard to its contents. Conditioned Fundamental Principle . . . . • § 3. Third, in its form Conditioned Fundamental Principle Remarks : (a) The logical proposition of ground . {J)) Synthetical judgments a' /;7'(?;/ . II. Theoretical Part of the Science of Knowledge Introductory Diremption of the Synthesis . - . . . A. General Synthesis of the Opposites of our Proposition [a) The Non-ego determines the Ego . . {h) The Ego determines itself .... PACE 63 63 70 73 75 79 85 88 99 lOI 103 105 106 106 B. Particular Synthesis of the Opposites contained in the first of the Opposites of our Proposition, through the Conception of Reciprocal Determination . . . 108 (a) Synthesis of Causality "S CONTENTS. PAGB C. Particular Synthesis of the Opposites contained in the second of the Opposites of our proposition through the Conception of Reciprocal Determination . .113 (a) Passivity a Quantum of Activity . . . . n6 {b) Illustration: The Conception of Substantiality . 117 D. Synthesis of the Opposition between the two discovered modes of Reciprocal Determination, Causality and Substantiality 123 1. An Independent Activity is determined through Re- ciprocal Activity and Passivity .... 128 (a) Application under the Conception of Causality . 129 Idealism and Realism . . . . . • I33 (J>) Application under the Conception of Substantiality. 134 2. An Independent Activity determines a Reciprocal Activity and Passivity . . . . . '137 (a) Application under the Conception of Causality . 138 (/') Application under the Conception of Substantiality 140 3. Both the Reciprocity and the Activity, independent thereof, mutually determine one another . . 142 {a) The Activity independent of the Form and the Activity independent of the Content of the Reci- procity are mutually to determine one another . 143 (^) The Form of Reciprocity and its Content are mutually to determine one another . . . 144 CONTENTS. 5 PAGE {c) The Independent Activity as Synthetical Unity determines the Reciprocity as Synthetical Unity and vice versa . . . . . . .14$ The Fivefold Nature of every Synthesis of Conscious- ness 146 4. Application under the Conception of Causality . . 147 (1) The Activity of the Form determines that of the Content, and vice versd . . . . .148 (2) The Form and the Content of the Reciprocity determine one another mutually . . .152 (3) The Synthetically United Activity and the Synthe~ tically United Reciprocity mutually determine one another, and constitute in themselves a Synthetical Unity 153 5. Application under the category of Substantiality . .160 (1) The Activity of the Form and of the Content mutually determine one another . . . l6l (2) The Form and the Content of the Reciprocity mutually determine one another . . .164 (3) The Activity as Synthetical Unity, and the Reci- procity as Synthetical Unity, mutually determine one another ....... 17* Final Remarks ''^^ CONTENTS^ III. SKETCH OF WHAT IS PECULIAR TO THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE IN RESPECT TO THE THEORETICAL FACULTY (pp. 1S9-255). PAGE III. Second Part of the Theoretical Part of the Science of Knowledge 189 Introductory Rejnarks ...,...- 191 (a) Deduction of Sensation ...... I93 (3) Deduction of Contemplation , . . . . 197 (c) Union of Contemplation and Sensation , . . 201 Explanatory : The Conception of Limitation , . . 205 Thesis : The Ego is free in so far as it acts . . . 221 Antithesis: The Ego is to Posit itself free because limited 221 Synthesis : The limitation the product of the Ego . 222 Roitark 229 Time and Space 235 Remarks on Space ........ 2(}4 Time 249 Concluding Remarks 253 IV. Practical Part of the Science of Knowledge . 256 Fundamental Principle : The Ego posits itself as determin- ing the Non-ego 259 (a) Thesis 267 CONTENTS. 7 PAGE {b) Antithesis 268 (f) Synthesis 269 Result 270 Further difficulty 272 Other statements of the same result . . . 276 Remark : On Centripetal Power 279 Second Remark : On God's Self-consciousness , . . 279 Result 280 Addenda 2S1 V. Second Part of the Practical Part of the Science of Knowledge 287 Introductory 289 (a) The tendency of the Ego is posited as Impulse, the Counter-tendency of the Non-ego as Check, and the Balance of both as Feeling .... 291 Explanatory Remark 293 (Z') Feeling itself is Posited and Determined . . 295 Preliminary 295 Further Determination and Limitation of Feeling . . 301 Solution ......•••• 3^4 Remark 305 The Impulse itself is Posited and Determined ■ . . . 305 Remark i 307 Remark 2 - 310 Ilhistration S'S Remarks 3i(> 5 CONTENTS. PAGE Explanation ••», 319 Eemark 322 Illustration 323 The Feelings themselves must be Posited as Opposites . 324 Remark 328 IV. THE DIGNITY OF MAN. The Dignity of Man (Lecture) ..... 331 V. THE RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. Religious Significance of the Science of Knowledge 339 Introductory. CONCERNING THE CONCEPTION SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. Part First. CONCERNING THE CONCEPTION OF THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE GENERALLY. \ I. HYPOTHETICAL CONCEPTION OF THIS SCIENCE. To unite divided parties it is best to proceed from the point wherein they agree. Philosophy is a science ; in this all descriptions of philosophy are as agreed as they are divided in determining the object of this science. This division, may it not have arisen, because the conception of that sci- ence, which they unanimously asserted philosophy to be, had not yet been wholly developed } And may not the determination of this one character- istic, wherein they all agree, suffice to determine the conception of philosophy itself .-' A science has systematic form. All propositions in it are con- nected in one single fundamental proposition or principle, and unite with it to form a whole. This is universally conceded. But does this character- istic exhaust the conception of a science .-' Supposing somebody were to build up ever so c 12 INTRODUCTION. systematic a natural history of certain spirits of the air, on the unproven and unprovable assumption, that such creatures exist in the air, with human passions, inclinations, and conceptions, should we call such a system a science, no matter how closely its several parts might be connected with each other into a whole ? On the other hand, supposing- somebody were to utter a single proposition — a me- chanic, for instance, the proposition that a pillar erected on a horizontal base in a right angle stands perpendicular, and will not incline toward either side, however far you extend it into infinity — a pro- position which he may have heard at some time and approved as true in experience : would not all men concede that such a person had a scientific knowledge of the proposition, although he should not be able to evolve the deduction of his proposi- tion from the first fundamental principle of geome- try ? Now, why do we call the fixed system, which rests on an unproven and unprovable first principle, no science at all, and why do we assert the know- ledge of the mechanic to be science, although it does not connect in his reason with a system ? Evidently, because the first, in spite of its cor- rect form, does not contain any thing that can be known ; and because the second, although without a correct form, asserts something which is really knozvn and can be knoivn. The characteristic of science, therefore, seems to consist in the quality of its content and the relation thereof to the con- sciousness of the person of whom a knowledge is INTRODUCTION. 1 3 asserted ; and the systematic form appears to be only accidental to the science ; is not the object of science, but merely a means to attain that object. This may, perhaps, be conceived in the following manner. If we suppose that from some reason or another the human mind can know only very little, and can have of every thing else only opinions, pre- sentiments, or arbitrary meanings ; and if we sup- pose, moreover, that from some reason or another the human mind can not well rest content with this limited or uncertain knowledge : then the only means of extending and securing that knowledge would be to compare all uncertain knowledge with the certain knowledge, and to draw conclusions from the equality or inequality of both as to the cor- rectness or incorrectness of the former. If an un- certain knowledge were thus discovered to be equal to a certain knowledge, it might be properly as- sumed to be also certain ; but if it were discovered unequal, it would now be definitely known as false, and could no longer deceive. We should be de- livered from an error, although we might not have gained positive truth. I speak plainer. Science is to be one and a whole. The proposition that a pillar erected in a right angle on a horizontal base occupies a perpen- dicular position, is doubtless a whole, and in so far a science for a person who has no connected know- ledge of geometry. But we also consider the whole geometry, which contains much more than that one proposition, a 14 introduction: science How then, and by what means do a multi- tude of very different propositions unite into 07ie science, into one and the same whole ? Clearly by this, that the separate propositions are not science, but form a science only in the whole, and through their connection in the whole. But by a composition of parts you can not put something into the whole which is not to be found in one of the parts. Hence, if none of the con- nected propositions had certainty, there would also be no certainty in the whole formed by them. One of the propositions, at least, therefore, must be certain, and this one, perhaps, communicates its certainty to the others in this manner : that if the one is to be true, then the second must be true, etc. Thus a multiplicity of propositions would at- tain only one certainty, and result in only one sci- ence, for the very reason that they all have cer- tainty and the same certainty. That one proposi- tion which we have just now spoken of as positively certain, can not obtain its certainty from its con- nection with the others, but must have it before- hand ; for by uniting parts you can not produce something which is in none of the parts. But all other propositions receive their truth from the first one. The first one must therefore be certain be- fore all connection with the others ; and all the others must receive their certainty only through and after the connection. From this it imme- diately appears that our above assumption is the only correct one, and that in a science there can introduction: 1$ only be one proposition which is certain before the connection with others. For if there were many such propositions, they would either be not at all connected with the former, and then they would not belong with it to the same whole ; or they would be thus connected ; but since they are only to be connected by one and the same certainty — that is, zythe one theorem is true, then the other must be true — they can not have independent cer- tainty ; for in that case one proposition might have independent certainty, although others had no cer- tainty, and hence they would not be connected through common certainty. Such a proposition, which has certainty before and independent of all connection, is 2i fundamental principle. Every science must have a fundamental principle ; nay, it might consist of simply such one principle, which in that case could not be called fundamental, however, since it would not be the foundation of others. But a science also can not have more than one fundamental principle, for else it would result in many sciences. The other propositions which a science may con- tain get certainty only through their connection with the fundamental principle ; and the connec- tion, as we have shown, is this : If the proposition A is true, then the proposition B is also true ; and if B is true, then must C be true, etc. This con- nection is called the systematic form of the whole, which results from the several component parts. Wherefore this connection } Surely not to produce 1 6 introduction: an artistic combination, but in order to give cer- tainty to propositions, which have not certainty in themselves. And thus the systematic form is not the object of science, but an accidence, a means, and on the condition that the science is to have a manifold of propositions. It is not the essence of science, but an accidental quality thereof Let science be a building, and let the chief ob- ject of this building be firmness. The foundation is firm, and as soon as it is laid down, the object would therefore be attained. But since you can not live on the foundation, nor protect yourself by its means against the arbitrary attacks of enemies, or the unarbitrary attacks of the weather, you pro- ceed to erect walls, and over the walls you build a roof All the parts of the building you connect with the foundation and with each other, and thus the whole gets firmness. But you do not build a building in order to connect the parts ; rather you connect the parts in order to make the building firm ; and it is firm in so far as all its parts rest upon a firm foundation. The foundation is firm, for it is not built on an- other foundation, but rests on the solid earth. But whereupon shall we erect the foundation of our sci- entific structure .' The fundamental principles of our systems must and shall be certain in advance of the system. Their certainty can not be proven within tne system ; but every possible proof in the system presupposes already their certainty. If they are certain, then of course all their results INTRODUCTION. 1 7 are certain ; hut from zuhat docs their own certahity follow ? And even after we shall have satisfactorily an- swered this question, does not a new and quite dif- ferent one threaten us ? We are going to draw our conclusions thus : If the fundamental principle is certain, then another proposition also is certain. How do we get at this the7i ? What is the ground of the necessary connection between the two, where- by the one is to have the same certainty which be- longs to the other ? What are the conditions of this connection, and whence do we know that they are the conditions and the exclusive conditions and the only conditions of this connection ? And how do we get at all to assume a necessary connection between different propositions, and exclusive but exhausted conditions of this connection ? In short, how shall tJie absolute certainty of the fundamental principle, and how sJiall the authority to draiv from it conclusions as to the certainty of other propositions, be demonstrated ? That which the fundamental principle is to have itself and to communicate to all other propositions which occur in the science, I call the inner content of the funda- mental principle and of science generally ; the man- ner in which it communicates this certainty to other propositions I call the form of science. The ques- tion is, therefore. How are form and content of a science possible .'' or how is science itself possible ? That which would give an answer to this ques- 1 8 JNTROD UC TION: tion would be itself a science, and would be, more- over, the science of science generally. It is impossible to determine in advance of the investigation whether such an answer is possible or not ; that is, whether our whole knowledge has a cognizable, firm basis, or whether it rests, after all -—however closely its separate parts may be con- nected — upon nothing, that is to say, upon nothing for us. But if our knowledge is to have a basis for us, then such an answer must be possible, and there must be a science which gives this answer. And if there is such a science, then our knowledge has a cognizable ground. Hence, in advance of the investigation, it is impossible to say whether our knowledge has a basis or has no basis at all ; and the possibility of the science in question can only be demonstrated by its actual realization. The naming of such a science, whereof the very possibility is as yet problematical, is altogether ar- bitrary. Still, if it should appear that all the terri- tory hitherto considered useful for the cultivation of sciences has already been appropriated, and that only one piece of uncultivated land has been left vacant for the science of all other sciences ; and if, moreover, it should appear that under a well-known name — the name of Philosophy — the idea of a sci- ence exists which pretends to be, or wishes to be, also a science, and is only in doubt where to settle down ; then it might not be improper to assign this science to the empty and uncultivated place. Wheth- er the word Philosophy has hitherto signified pre- iNTROD uction: 1 9 cisely that very same object is immaterial ; and, moreover, if this science should really thus turn out to be a science, it would doubtless very justly dis- card a name which it has hitherto borne from a surely not over great modesty, namely, that of a Dilettanteism. The nation which shall discover this science is well worthy of giving it a name from its own language, and might name it simply Science, or the Science of Knowledge. What has been here- tofore called philosophy would thus be the science of science generally. § 2. — EXPLANATION OF THE CONCEPTION OF THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. It is not allowable to draw conclusions from defi- nitions. This rule signifies : from the fact that it is possible to tJiink a certain characteristic in the description of a thing, which thing exists altogether independently of such a description, it is not allow- able to conclude that this characteristic is therefore really discoverable in the thing ; or, when we produce a thing after a conception formed of it, which cot. ception expresses the purposes of the thing, it is not allowable to conclude from the thinkability of the purpose that it is actually realized. On no ac- count, however, can the above rule signify that we must have no well-defined purpose in our bodily or mental labors, but must leave it to our fancy or to our fingers what the result of our labor shall be. The inventor of the aerostatic balls was perfectly 20 INTRODUCTION. warranted in calculating the relation of the gas in the balls to the weight of the atmosphere, and thus to discover the velocity of movement of his machine, although he did not know yet whether he would ever be able to discover a gas sufficiently lighter than air ; and Archimedes was able to cal- culate the machine by which he could move the globe out of its place, although he knew well enough that he could find no place beyond the at- traction of the earth from which to operate with his machine. Thus, also, with our science of know- ledge. It is not as such something which exists in- dependent of us, but rather something which must first be produced by the freedom of our mind, work- ing in a certain direction, that is, if there is such a freedom, which, of course, can also not be known as yet. Let us determine this direction in advance, and obtain a clear conception of what is to be our work. Whether we can produce it or not will ap- pear from the fact whether we do produce it, but this is not yet our purpose. We at present merely wish to see wJiat it really is we intend to do. 1st. First of all, the described science is to be a science of science generally. Every possible science has ojie fundamental principle, which can not be proven in it, but must be certain in advance of it. But where, then, is this first principle to be proven } Evidently in that science which is to be the ground of all possible sciences. In this respect the science of knowledge would have a twofold object : Firstly, to show the possibility of fundamental principles INTRODUCTIOr^. 21 generally ; to show how, to what extent, ana under what conditions, and perhaps in what degree some- thing can be certain, and indeed to show what it really means to be certain ; and, secondly, to prove particularly the fundamental principles of all possi- ble sciences, which can not be proven in those sciences themselves. Every science, which is to be a whole of compo- nent parts, has a systematic form. This form — the condition of the connection of the deduced propo- sitions with the fundamental principle, and the ground which justifies us in drawing conclusions from this connection, that the deduced propositions have necessarily the same certainty which pertains to the fundamental principle — can also, like the truth of the fundamental principle, not be demonstrated in the particular science itself, but is presupposed as the possibility of its form. Hence, a general science of knowledge must, moreover, show up the ground for the systematic form of all possible sci- ences. 2d. The science of knowledge is itself a science. Hence it must also have ono. fundamental principle, which can not be proven in it, but must be presup- posed for its very possibility as a science. But this fundamental principle can not be proven in another higher science, since otherwise this other higher science would be the science of knowledge. This fundamental principle of the science of knowledge, and hence of all sciences and of all knowledge, is, therefore, absolutely not to be proven ; that is, it 22 INTRODUCTION. can not be deduced from a higher principle, the re- lation to which might demonstrate its certainty. Since, nevertheless, it is to be the basis of all cer- tainty, it must be certain in itself, through itself, and for the sake of itself All other propositions will be certain, because it can be shown that they are in some respect related to it, but this one must be certain merely because it is related to itself All other propositions will only have a mediated cer- tainty derived from it, but itself must have imme- ate certainty. Upon it all knowledge is grounded, without it no knowledge were indeed possible ; but itself has its ground in no other knowledge, being, on the contrary, itself the ground of all knowledge. This fundamental principle is absolutely certain ; that is, it is certain because it is certain. You can not inquire after its ground without contradiction. It is the ground of all certainty ; that is, every thing which is certain is certain, because this fundamental principle is certain, and nothing is certain if it is not certain. It is the ground of all knowledge ; that is, you know what it asserts, simply because you know any thing at all ; you know it immediate- ly when you know any thing at all. It accompanies all knowledge, is contained in all knowledge, and is presupposed by all knowledge. The science of knowledge, in so far as it is a science, and is to con- sist of more than its fundamental principle — which seems necessary, since it is to furnish the funda- mental principles of all sciences — must have a sys- tematic form. It is evident that it can not derive INTRODUCTION. 2$ this form, either in regard to its deternihiatcncss or in regard to its validity, from any other science, since itself is to furnish all other sciences their sys- tematic form. Hence, the science of knowledge must contain this form within itself, and must it- self show up the ground of this form. Let us con- sider this a little, and it will directly appear what this assertion means. That whereof any thing is known we will, in the mean while, call the content, and that which is known thereof X\\Qform of a prop- osition. (In the proposition, gold is a body ; that whereof is known is gold and the body ; that which is known of them is, that they are in a certain re- spect equal, and might in so far replace each other. It is an affirmative proposition, and this relation is its form.) No proposition is possible without content or without form. It must contain something whereof we know, and something which is known thereof. Hence, the first principle of the science of know- ledge must have both content and form. Now, this first principle is to be immediately and of itself cer- tain, and this can only signify : its content must determine its form, and its form its content. Its form can only fit its content, and its content can only fit its form ; every other form connected with that content, or every other content connected with that form, would cancel that principle itself, and thus annihilate all knowledge. Hence, the form of the absolute first principle of the science of knowledge is not only contained in that principle itself, but is 24 introduction: also presented as absolutely valid for the content of that principle. Again : if there should be, besides this absolute first principle, still other fundamental principles of the science of knowledge — which in that case can only be partly absolute, and must be partly derived from the first principle, since other- wise in the first case they would not be fundamen- tal principles, and in the latter case not connected with the first and highest principle — then the abso- lute part of these other fundamental principles could only be either the content or the form ; and, like- wise, the conditioned or derived part of these prin- ciples could only be either the content or the form. If the cojitent of these other fundamental principles be their absolute or unconditioned part, then the absolute first principle of the science of knowledge must condition the form of those contents ; or if the form of those other principles be the uncondi- tioned part, then their content must be conditioned by the first principle of the science of knowledge ; and thus indirectly also their form, that is, in so far as the form is to be form of the content. In either case, therefore, the form would be determined by the first absolute principle of the science of know- ledge. And since it is impossible that there should be a fundamental principle not determined either in form or in content by the first absolute principle, (that is, if we are to have a science of knowledge at all,) it follows that there can only be three funda- mental principles : one absolutely in and through itself determined both in form and in content ; a INTRODUCTION. 2$ second one determined through itself in form ; and a third one determined through itself in content. If there are still other propositions in the science of knowledge, they must be determined both in re- gard to form and content by the fundamental prin- ciple. Hence, a science of knowledge must deter- mine the form of all its propositions, in so far as they are separately considered. But such a deter- mination of the separate propositions is only thus possible : that they reciprocally determine each other. But each proposition must be pa^fectly de- termined, that is, its form must suit only its and no other content, and its content must only suit its and no other form ; for else such a proposition would not be equal to the first principle, in so far as that first principle is certain, and hence would not be certain. If, nevertheless, all the propositions of a science of knowledge are to be dificrent, which they must be if they are to be many propositions and not one proposition, then no proposition can obtain its com- plete determination otherwise than through a single one of all propositions. And thus the whole series of propositions becomes determined, and no proposi- tion can occupy another place in the system than that which it occupies. Each proposition in the science of knowledge has its position determined by a de- termined other proposition, and on its part deter- mines the position of a determined third proposi- tion. Hence, the science of knowledge estabHshes itself the form of its whole for itself This form of the science of knowledge is neceS' 26 INTRODUCTION. sarily valid for its content. For if the absolute first principle was immediately certain, that is, if its form was fit only for its content, and its content only for its form, and if through this first principle all possible subsequent propositions are determined, immediately or mediately, in form or content ; if all subsequent theorems, in other words, are, as it were, contained already in the first one, then it fol- lows that what holds good for the first must also hold good in regard to the others ; that is, that their form is only fit for their content, and their content only for their form. It is true, this relates only to the separate propositions ; but the form of the whole is nothing but the form of the separate propositions, thought in one ; and what is valid for each separate must be valid for all, thought as one. But the science of knowledge is to give not only itself its own form, but is also to give all otJier pos- sible sciences their form ; and is to make certain the validity of this form for all other sciences. This can only be thought possible on condition that every thing which is to be a proposition of any other science must be already involved in some proposition of the science of knowledge, and hence must have obtained its proper form already in that science. This opens to us an easy way of getting back to the content of the absolute first principle of the science of knowledge, of which we can now say something more than was possible before. If we assume for the present that to be certain means simply to have an insight into the inseparability INTRODUCTION. 2J of a determined content from a determined form, (which is to be only a definition of a name, since a real definition of knowledge is simply impossible,) then we might understand already to some extent how the fact that the fundamental principle of all knowledge determines its form only through its content, and its content only through its form, could determine the form of all the content of , knowledge ; that is to say, if all possible content were contained in the content of that first prin- ciple. If, therefore, there is to be an absolute first principle of all knowledge, this assumption must be correct ; that is, the content of this first principle must contain all other possible content, but must itself be contained in no other content. In short, it must be the absolute content. It is easy to remember that, in presupposing the possibility of a science of knowledge, and partic- ularly of its first principle, we always presuppose that there is really a system in human knowledge. If such a system, however, is to be in it, it can be shown — even apart from our description of the sci- ence of knowledge — that there must be such an ab- solute first principle. If there is not to be any such system, two cases only are possible. Either there is no immediate certainty at all, and the/ our knowledge forms many series or one infinite series, wherein each theorem is derived from a higher one, and this again from a higher one, etc., etc. We build our houses on the earth, the earth rests on an elephant, the elephant on a tortoise, the tor- 2S INTRODUCTION. toise again — who knows on what ? — and so on ad infinitum. True, if our knowledge is thus con- stituted, we can not alter it ; but neither have we, then, any firm knowledge. We may have gone back to a certain link of our series, and have found every thing firm up to this link ; but who can guar- antee us that, if we go further back, we may not find it ungrounded, and shall thus have to abandon it ? Our certainty is only assumed, and we can never be sure of it for a single following day. Or the second case : Our knowledge consists of finite series, but of many finite series, each series ending in a fundamental principle, which has its ground in no other one, but only in itself; all these fundamental principles having no connection among each other, and being perfectly independent and isolated. In this case there are, perhaps, sev- eral inborn truths in us, all more or less inborn, and in the connection of which we can expect no further insight, since it lies beyond these inborn truths ; or there is, perhaps, a manifold simple in the things outside of us, which is communicated to us by means of the impression produced upon us by the things, but into the connection v/hereof we can not penetrate, since there can not be any thing more simple than the simplest in the impression. If this second case is the truth, if human know- ledge is in itself such a piecework — as the real knowledge of so many men unhappily is — if origin- ally a number of threads lie in our minds, which are or can be connected with each other in no introduction: 29 point, then again we may not be able to alter this state of things, and our knowledge is, as far as it extends, certain enough ; but it is no iniit, it is a manifold knowledge. Our building stands firm, but, instead of being a connected structure, it is an aggregate of chambers, from none of which we can enter the other ; a building wherein we always get lost, and never feel ourselves at home. There is no light in it ; and in sj^ite of our riches we always remain poor, because we can never calculate them, never consider them as a whole, and hence never know what v.^e really possess ; we can never use part of it to improve the rest, because no part is relatable to the rest. Nay, more : our knowledge will never be completed ; we must expect every day that a new inborn truth may manifest itself in us, or that experience may furnish us with a new simple. We must always be prepared to build a new house for ourselves. No general science of knowledge will be possible as containing the ground of other sciences. Each will be grounded in itself There will be as many sciences as there are separate immediately certain propositions. But if neither the first case is to be correct, namely, that there are one or more mere fragments of a system, nor the second, that there are to be a manifold of systems, then a highest and absolute first fundamental principle must exist as the basis of a complete and unit-system in the human mind. From this first principle our knowledge may ex- pand into ever so many series, each of which again may expand into series, etc., still all of them must 30 INTRODUCTION. rest firm upon one single link, which is not de- pendent upon another one, which holds itself and the whole system by virtue of its own power. In this link we shall possess a globe, holding itself firm by virtue of its own gravitation, the central point whereof attracts with almighty force whatso- ever we have but erected upon its surface and per- pendicularly, and not in the air or obliquely, and which allows no grain of dust to be torn away from its sphere of power. Whether such a system and its condition, a first principle, exist, can not be decided in advance of the investigation. This fundamental principle can neither be proven as mere principle, nor as the basis of all knowledge. Every thing depends upon the attempt. If we shall find a proposition which has the internal conditions of the fundamental prin- ciple of all human knowledge, we shall try to dis- cover whether it has also its external conditions^, whether every thing we know or believe to know can be traced back to it. If we succeed in this, we shall have proven by the realization of the science of knowledge that it is possible, and that there is a system of human knowledge, whereof it is the rep- resentation. If we do not succeed in this, there either is no such system or we have merely failed in discovering it, and must leave the discovery to more fortunate successors. To maintain that there is no such system merely because we have failed to discover it would be an assumption, the refutation whereof is beneath the dignity of earnest investiga- tion. Part Second. § 3. — DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPTION OF THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. To develop a conception scientifically is to assign to it its place in the system of human sciences gen- erally, that is, to show what conception determines its position in the system, and of which conception it determines the position. But the conception of the science of knowledge generally, as well as of knowledge generally, can evidently have no position in the system of all sciences, since it is itself rather the place for all scientific conceptions, and assigns to all their positions in itself and through itself It is clear, therefore, that we can speak here only of a hypothetical development ; that is, the question is, If we assume that there are sciences, and that there is truth in them, (which can not be known in ad- vance of the science of knowledge,) how is the science of knowledge related to these sciences .'' This question also is answered by the mere con- ception of that science. The latter sciences arc related to it as the grounded is to its ground ; they 3 2 INTRO D UCTION. do not assign to it its place, but it assigns to them their places in itself and through itself. All we can, therefore, propose to ourselves here is a further explanation of this answer. 1. The science of knowledge is to be a science of all sciences. Here arises the question : How can the science of knowledge guarantee that it has furnished the ground, not only of all as yet discov- ered and known, but also of all discoverable and knowable sciences, and that it has completely ex- hausted the whole field of human knowledge .-• 2. As the science of all sciences, the science of knowledge is to furnish to all sciences their funda- mental principles. Hence, all propositions, which are fundamental principles of the particular sci- ences, are at the same time inherent propositions of the science of knowledge ; and thus one and the same propositions may be regarded both as a pro- position of the science of knowledge, and as the fundamental principle of a particular science. The science of knowledge evolves from the same propo- sition further deductions ; and the particular science whereof it is the fundamental principle also evolves from it further deductions. Hence, either the de- ductions of both sciences are the same — and then there is no such a thing as a particular science — or both sciences have a distinct and peculiar mode of deduction ; and this is impossible, because the science of knowledge is to furnish the form of all sciences ; or something is added to a proposition of the science of knowledge, which something must, INTRODUCTION. 33 of course, be derived from the same science, where- by it becomes fundamental principle of a particular science. Here the question arises : What is this which is added ? or, since this additional is to frame the distinction, what is the definite boundary be- tween the general science of knowledge and every particular science ? 3. Again, the science of knowledge is to deter- mine the form of all sciences. How this can be done we have shown above. But another science, under the name of logic, pretends to have this same object. Sentence must be passed upon the claims of both sciences, that is, it must be decided how the science of knowledge is related to logic. 4. The science of knowledge is itself a science. What it is to accomplish as such we have shown above. But in so far as it is a mere science, a knowledge, in the formal significance of the word, it is a science of a something ; it has an object, and it is clear from the above that this object can be no other than the system of human knowledge gen- erally. The question arises : How is the science of knowledge, as science, related to its ol^ject as such .'' § 4. IN HOW FAR CAN THE SCIENCE OF KNOW- LEDGE BE SURE OF HAVING EXHAUSTED HUMAN KNOWLEDGE GENERALLY } The Jdthcrto true or imaginary human knowledge is not human knowledge generally ; and, though a 34 INTRODUCTION. philosopher had really exhausted the former, and shown by a perfect induction that it were contained in his system, he would yet by no means have sat- isfied the task imposed upon philosophy ; for how could he prove by his induction from present expe- rience that in the future some discovery might not be made which would not fit into his system ? Quite as unsatisfactory would be the excuse that he only intended to exhaust the knowledge pos- sible in the present sphere of human existence ; for if his philosophy is only valid for this sphere, he clearly confesses that he knows no possible other sphere, and hence, also, not the limits of that sphere which his philosophy claims to exhaust. Hence, he has arbitrarily drawn a limit, the validity whereof he can only prove by past experience, and which may, therefore, be contradicted by any possible future experience even within his own posited sphere. Human knowledge generally is to be exhausted, signifies : it is to be absolutely and unconditionally determined what man can know not only on the present stage, but on all possible and conceivable stages of his existence. This is only possible if it can be shown, firstly, that the accepted fundamental principle is exhaust- ed ; and, secondly, that no other fundamental prin- ciple is possible than the accepted one. A funda- mental principle is exhausted when a complete system has been erected upon it, that is, when that fundamental principle necessarily leads to all the propositions deduced from it, and when, again, all introduction: 35 deduced propositions necessarily lead back to it. When no proposition occurs in the whole system which could be true if the fundamental principle were false, or false if the fundamental principle were true ; then this is the negative proof that no siLper- Jiiioiis proposition has been accepted in the system ; for the superfluous one, which did not belong to the system, might be true though the fundamental principle were false, or false though the latter were true. When the fundamental principle is given, all propositions must be given. Each particular one is given in and through the fundamental principle. This connection of the separate propositions of the science of knowledge proves that the science has the required negative proof in and through itself This negative proof shows that the science is sys- tematic, that all its parts are connected in a single fundamental principle. Again, the science is a system, or is completed, if no further proposition can be deduced ; and this furnishes the positive proof that all the propositions of the system have been admitted. Still, of this there must be other evidence ; for the mere relative and negative assertion, / do not see what other deductions might be made, is not sufficient. Some one else might arise hereafter, and see what I did not see. We need, therefore, a positive proof that no other propositions could possibly follow, and this proof can only arise if the same fundamental prin- ciple from which we started shall also show itself to be the final result ; since, then, we could not pro- 36 iNTROD uction: ceed without describing the same circle we should have already drawn. When the time comes to rep- resent this science, it will be shown, also, that it really describes this circle, leaving the student pre- cisely at the point from which it started, and thus furnishing also the second positive proof in and through itself* But although the fundamental principle be exhausted and a complete system erected upon it, it does not follow that thereby hu- man knowledge generally is exhausted, unless we presuppose what ought first to be proven, namely, that this fundamental principle is the fundamental principle of human knowledge generally. Of course, nothing can be added or taken away from the com- pleted system which has been erected ; but why might not the future, through augmented expe- rience, cause propositions to arise in human consci- ousness which can not be grounded upon that fun- damental principle, and which, therefore, presup- pose one or more other fundamental principles .'* In short, why could not one or more other systems coexist in the human mind with the first one .'' To be sure, they would be neither connected with the first one nor with each other in any common point ; but neither is this required, if they are to form many * The science of knowledge has absolute totality. In it one leads to all, and all to one. But it is also the only science which can be completed. Completion is, therefore, its distinguishing character- istic. All other sciences are infinite, and can not be completed, for they do not return to their fundamental principles. This the science of knowledge has to prove for all other sciences, and show up the ground of it jNrRODucTioN: 37 systems. Hence, if the impossibility of new dis- coveries is to be satisfactorily proven, it must be shown tJiat only one systein can be in Jiuinan know- ledge. Now, since the proposition that all human knowledge results only in one in itself connected knowledge — is itself to be a component of human knowledge — it can not be grounded upon any other principle than the one assumed as the fundamental principle of all human knowledge, and can only be proven by it. By this we have gained, at least for the present, so much that we see how such a future proposition as we supposed might possibly arise in consciousness would not only be anotJier one, dif- ferent from the fundamental principle of our sys- tem, but would also be contradictory of the latter in form. For, according to all we have said, the fundamental principle of our system must involve the proposition that there is a unit-system in hu- man knowledge. Every proposition, therefore, which is not to belong to this system must not only be a different system, but must be a direct contradiction of it, in so far as the former system asserts itself to be the only possible one. It must be a contra- diction of the deduced projoosition of the unity of the system ; and, since all its propositions are in- separably connected, of each single theorem, and particularly of the fundamental principle thereof Hence, it would have to rest on a fundamental principle directly opposed to the first fundamental principle. If, for instance, the first fundamental 38 introduction: principle should turn out to be : I am I ; this second one would have to be : I am not I. Now, it would be wrong to conclude from this contradiction the impossibility of such a second fundamental principle. If the first fundamental principle involves the proposition that the system of human knowledge is a unit, it involves also, it is true, that nothing must contradict this system. But both these propositions are merely deductions from the first fundamental principle, and hence, by ac- cepting the absolute validity of the deductions, we already assume that itself is the absolute first and only fundamental principle of human knowledge. Here, therefore, is a circle which the human mind can never get out of ; and it is well to confess this circle plainly, lest its unexpected discovery at some time might confound men. This circle is as fol- lows : If the proposition X is the first, highest, and absolute fundamental principle of human know- ledge, then there is in human knowledge a unit- system, for the latter is the result of the proposition X. Now, since there is to be in human knowledge a unit-system, the proposition X, which really does establish such a system, is the fundamental princi- ple of human knowledge, and the system based upon it is that unit-system of human knowledge. It is unnecessary to be surprised at this circle. For to demand that it should be annihilated is to demand that human knowledge should be utterly groundless, that there should be no absolute cer- tainty, and that all human knowledge should be INTRODUCTlOiV. 39 only conditioned ; in short, it is to assert that there is no immediate truth at all, but only mediated truth, and this without any thing zuhcrcby it is mediated. Whosoever feels thereunto inclined may investi- gate as much as he pleases what he would know if his Ego were not Ego ; that is, if he did not exist, and if he could not distinguish a Non-Ego from his Ego. § 5. WHAT IS THE LIMIT WHICH SEPARATES THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE FROM THE PARTICULAR SCIENCES ? We discovered above (§ 3) that one and the same proposition could not be in the same respect a proposition of the science of knowledge and of a particular science ; and that to be the latter, it would be necessary to have something added to it. This character which is to be added can only be derived from the science of knowledge, since it contains all possible human knowledge ; but can not, as is evident, be contained in that science in the same proposition which is to become funda- mental principle of the particular science. Hence, it must be, perhaps, contained in another separate proposition of the science of knowledge, which is connected with the proposition which is to become the fundamental principle of a particular science. Since we have here to meet an objection which does not arise from the conception of the science of knowledge itself, but merely from the presuppo- 40 introduction: sition that there exist also other separate sciences, we can meet it also only by a presupposition, and shall have done enough for the present if we but show a possibility of the required limitation. That it will be the true limitation — although it may, nevertheless, turn out so — we neither care nor need to prove here. Let it be, therefore, assumed that the science of knowledge contains those determined acts of the human mind which it — be it conditioned or uncon- ditioned — enacts necessarily and under compul- sion ; but that it posits at the same time, as the highest explanatory ground of those necessary acts, a power to determine itself, (absolutely and without compulsion or necessity:) to act generally. Under this assumption the science of knowledge will re- sult in a necessary and a not necessary or free act- ing. The acts of the human mind, in so far as it acts necessarily, will be determined by the science, but not in so far as it acts free. Let it be further assumed that the free acts also are to be determined from some reason or another ; then this determination can not occur in the science of knowledge. But since it is a determining, it must occur in sciences ; hence in particular sciences. The object of these free acts can be no other than the necessary, furnished by the science of know- ledge, since it furnishes every thing and since it furnishes only the necessary. Hence, in the fun- damental principle of a particular science, an act which the science of knowledge 7eft free would be INTRODUCTION. 4I determined. The science of knowledge would thus give to the act, that is, to the fundamental prin- ciple, firstly, its necessary character, and, secondly, freedom generally ; but the particular science would give that freedom its determination ; and thus the sharply drawn line of limitation would have been discovered. As soon as an in itself free act receives a determined direction, we leave the field of the science of knowledge generally, and enter the field of a particular science. I shall illustrate this by two examples : The science of knowledge furnishes, as necessary, space, and, as absolute limit, the point ; but it leaves imagination perfectly free to posit the point wher- ever it chooses. As soon as this freedom is de- termined, for example, to move the point against the limit of the unlimited space, and thus to draw a line,* we are no longer on the field of the science of knowledge, but on the field of a particular science, which is called geometry. The general problem, to limit space in accordance with a rule, or the con- * A question for mathematicians. Does not the conception of a line involve already the conception of straightness .' Are there other lines than straight ones ? And is the so-called curved line any thing but a combination of infinitely many and infinitely close connected points ? The origin of the curved line as the line of lim- itation of the infinite space (from the Ego as central point an in- finite manifold of infinite radii are drawn, to which our limited im- agination posits an end-point, and these end-points, when thought as one, are the original line of the circle) seems to guarantee this ; and from this it becomes clear that and why the problem of mea- suring it by a straight line is an infinite problem. It also appears fi-om this why the straight line can not be defi.ned. 42 INTRODUCTION. struction in space, is fundamental principle of geom- etry, which science is thus clearly divided from the science of knowledge. Again : the science of knowledge furnishes as necessary a nature which, in its being and determinations, i"s to be considered as independent of us ; and also furnishes as neces- sary the laws, according to which nature is to be and must be observed.* But our power of judg- ment retains its full freedom to apply these laws or not, or to apply whatever law it chooses to any pos- sible object ; (for instance, to regard the human body as inorganic, or as organic, or as living mat- ter.) But as soon as the power of judgment is re- quired to observe a determined object by a deter- mined law, (for instance, whether animal life can be explained from the mere inorganic ; whether crys- tallization be the transition from chemical connec- tions to organization ; whether magnetic and elec- * Curious as it may appear to many explorers of nature, it will nevertheless show itself to be the strict truth, that they themselves first put the laws into nature which they believe to have learned from her, and that the smallest as well as the most extensive law the structure of a leaf of grass as well as the motion of the heavenly bodies, can be deduced in advance of all observation from the fun- damental principle of all human knowledge. It is true that no law of nature, and indeed no law whatever, aiises to our coitscioiisness, unless an object is given to which it can be applied ; it is true that not all objects necessarily, and not all objects in the same degree, must or can agree with the laws; but for that very reason is it true that we do not learn them from observation, but posit them as the ground of all observation, and that they are not so much laws of independent nature as laws for ourselves how we Lave to ob- ser\'e nature. INTRODUCTION. 43 trie powers are the same or not, etc.,) then it is no longer free, but obeys a rule ; "and hence we are no longer in the science of knowledge, but on the field of another science, which is called the science of nature. The general rule, to subsume every ob- ject of experience under a given law of nature in our mind, is fundamental principle of the science of nature. That science consists throughout of ex- periments, (not of a passive reception of the lawless influences of nature upon us,) which are arbitrarily undertaken, and with which nature may correspond or not ; and by this characteristic the science of nature is abundantly separated from the science of knowledge. Here, therefore, is already clearly seen why only the science of knowledge can have absolute totality, and why all particular sciences must be infinite. The science of knowledge contains only the neces- sary ; if this is necessary in every respect, it is necessary also in respect to quantity, that is, it is necessarily limited. All other sciences are based upon freedom, freedom of our mind as well as of the absolutely independent nature. If this is to be truly freedom, subject to no law, it is impossible to prescribe for them a limited sphere, since this could only be done by a law. Hence, their spheres are infinite. Let no one, therefore, apprehend danger from an exhaustive science of knowledge for the infinite perfectibility of the human mind ; on the contrary, instead of canceling that infinite perfecti- bility, the science of knowledge rather secures it 44 introduction: against all doubt, and assigns to it a problem which can not be completed in all eternity, § 6. HOW IS THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE RE- LATED TO LOGIC ? The science of knowledge is to determine the form for all possible sciences. According to cur- rent opinion, in which there may be something true, logic does the very same thing. How are these two sciences related to each other, particu- larly in respect to this problem, which each claims to solve .-* By remembering that logic only pretends to de- termine the form of all possible sciences, whereas the science of knowledge is also to determine their content, an easy way is discovered to enter into this important investigation. In the science of knowledge the form is never separated from the content, nor the content from the form. In each of its propositions both form and content are insep- arably united. If the propositions of logic are therefore to contain merely the form of possible sciences, they are not propositions of the science of knowledge ; and hence the whole science of logic is not science of knowledge, nor even part of it. Curious as it may sound at the present state of philosophy, the science of logic is no philosophical science at all, but a peculiar, separate science ; a fact, however, which is not to disparage the dignity of that science. INTRODUCTION. 45 If the science of logic is such a separate science, it must be possible to show a determination of free- dom by means of which the science of logic arises from the science of knowledge, and the limit of both may be ascertained. Such a determination of free- dom is indeed clearly to be pointed out. In the science of knowledge, as we have said, form and content are necessarily united. Logic is to repre- sent the pure form apart from the content ; and this separation of form and content can only — since it is not an original separation — occur through free- dom. Hence, it is by the free separation of form from the content that logic arises as a science. Such a separation is called abstraction ; and hence logic consists essentially in abstraction from all content of the science of knowledge. In this manner the propositions of logic would be merely form, which is impossible, for the concep- tion of a proposition involves (see § i) that it have both form and content. Hence, that which in the science of knowledge is mere form must be content in logic, and this content must again receive the general form of the science of knowledge, but which is now thought as the form of a logical proposition. This second act of freedom, whereby the form be- comes its own content and returns into itself, is called reflection. No abstraction is possible with- out reflection, and no reflection without abstraction. Both acts, considered separately, are acts of freedom ; and when, in this same separation, they are placed in relation to each other, one of them is necessarily 46 introduction: the condition of the other. But in synthetical think- ing both are only one and the same act, viewed from two sides. From this results the determined relation of logic to the science of knowledge. The former is not the ground of the latter ; but the latter is the ground of the former. The science of knowledge can not be proven from the science of logic, and no logical proposition, not even the proposition of con- tradiction, must be accepted in advance as valid by the science of knowledge ; but, on the contrary, every logical proposition and the whole science of logic must be proven from the science of knowledge. It must be shown that all the forms contained in logic are really forms of a certain content in the science of knowledge. Thus, logic derives its validity from the science of knowledge, and not the science of knowledge its validity from logic. Again, the science of knowledge is not conditioned and determified by logic, but logic is conditioned and determined by the science of knowledge. The science of knowledge does not derive its form from logic, but has that form in itself On the contrary, the science of knowledge conditions the validity and applicability of logical propositions. The forms which logic establishes must, in the common way of thinking, and in all particular sciences, be applied to no other content than that which they are con- fined to in the science of knowledge ; not neces- sarily to the whole of that content — for then we should have no particular sciences — but at least to INTRODUCTION. 47 what is part of that content. Without this condi- tion the particular science to which such forms were appHed would only be an air castle, however correct its logical deductions might be. Finally, the science of knowledge is necessary ; not necessary exactly in so far as it is a clearly con- ceived and systematically arranged science, but at least necessary as a natural gift ; while logic is an artificial product of the human mind in its freedom. Without the former, no knowledge and no science would be possible ; without the latter, all sciences would have been much later developed. The for- mer is the exclusive condition of all science ; the latter is a very beneficial invention to secure and facilitate the progress of sciences. Let me exemplify this : A=A is undoubtedly a correct logical proposi- tion, and in so far as it is this it signifies \ If K'xs posited, then A is posited. Two questions arise here : Is A really posited .'' and in how far and why is A posited if\\. is posited, or how are the z/and the tJien connected .^ Let us assume that A in this proposition signifies I, {Ego) and that it has, therefore, its determined content, then the proposition would be this : I am 1 \ or, if 1 am posited, then I am posited. But since the subject of this proposition is the absolute subject, in this single case the content is posited at the same time with the form ; I am posited, because I have posited myself I am because I am. Hence, logic says : 7/" A is, then A is ; but the science of 48 introduction: knowledge says : Because A (that is, this particular A=Ego) is, therefore A is. And thus the ques- tion : Is A (this particular A) really posited ? is an- swered thus : It is posited, since it is posited. It is unconditionally and absolutely posited. Let us assume that in the above proposition A does not signify I, (Ego,) but something else, then the condition can be clearly realized, under which it would be possible to answer : A is posited ; and how we can be justified in drawing the conclusion: If A is posited, then it is posited. For the propo- sition A= A is valid originally only for the Ego ; it has been abstracted from the proposition of the science of knowledge, I am I. Hence, all the content, to which it is to be applicable, must be contained in the Ego. No A can, therefore, be any thing else but an A posited in the Ego ; and now the proposition reads : Whatsoever is posited in the Ego is posited ; if A is posited in the Ego, then it is posited, (that is, in so far as it is posited as pos- sible, actual, or necessary ;) and thus the proposi- tion is shown to be true, beyond contradiction, if the Ego is to be Ego. Again, if the Ego is posit- ed because it is posited, then every thing which is posited in the Ego is posited because it is posited ; and if A alone is posited in the Ego, then it is pos- ited if it is posited ; and thus our second question is also answered. JNTRODUCTION. 49 § 7. HOW IS THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE, AS SCIENCE, RELATED TO ITS OBJECT ? Let US first premise that this question has hith- erto been utterly abstracted from, and that hence all the foregoing must be modified by the answer- ing of this question. Every proposition in the science of knowledge has form and content ; something is known, and there is something whereof is known. But the science of knowledge is itself the science of some- thing, and not this something itself This would seem to prove that the science of knowledge, with all its propositions, is form of a content which ex- isted in advance of it. How, then, is it related to this content, and what follows from this relation } The object of the science of knowledge, we have seen, is the system of human knowledge. This ex- ists independently of the science of it, and the sci- ence only shapes it into systematic form. What, then, may this new form be, how is it distinguished from the form which must exist in advance of the science, and how is the science generally distin- guished from its object .-" Whatever exists in the human mind, independently of science, we may also call the acts of that mind. These acts are the What which exists ; they occur in a certain determined manner, and by this deter- mined manner are they distinguished from each other. This is the Hoxv of the What. Hence, there is in the human mind originally, and in ad- 50 INTRODUCTION. vance of our knowledge, form and content, and both are inseparably united ; each act occurs in a determined manner, in accordance with a law, and this law determines the act. Nay, there may be, even for an outside observer, a system in these acts, if they are mutually connected with each other, and if they follow general, particular, and specific laws. But it is not at all necessary that they should actually occur (that is, in time) in that systematic form which the outside observer frames in positing them as dependent on each other ; it is not at all necessary, for instance, that the act which com- prises all others, and which furnishes the highest universal law, should actually occur first in our mind, and be followed by the one next in impor- tance ; not necessary at all that they should all occur in a pure and unmixed state, or that many of them might not appear as one. Let us assume, for in- stance, that the highest act of the Intelligence be this : to posit itself. It is not at all necessary that this act should be in time the first act of our mind which arises to clear consciousness ; nor is it even necessary that it should ever occur in consciousness in its purity ; that is, that the Intelligence should ever be able to think simply / am, without, at the same time, thinking another, which is Not I. Now, herein lies the whole content of a possible science of knowledge, but not that science itself. In order to build up this science we need a new act of the human mind, not contained in all its other acts, namely, the power to become conscious of its man- iNTROD uction: S I Iter of actiiig generally. And since this act is not to be contained in all the other acts, which are all ne- cessary, and which are all the necessary acts, it must be an act of freedom. Hence, the science of know- ledge, in so far as it is to be a systematic science, is built up in the same manner in which all possible sciences, in so far as they are to be systematic, are built up, that is, through a determination of free- dom ; which freedom is in the science of know- ledge particularly determined : to become conscious of the general manner of acting of the intelligence. Hence, the science of knowledge is distinguished from other sciences only in this, that the object of the latter sciences is itself a free act, while the ob- jects of the science of knowledge are necessary acts. Now, by means of this free act, something, which is in itself already form, namely, the necessary act of the intelligence, is taken up as content and put into a new form, that is, the form of knowledge or of consciousness ; and hence that free act is an act of reflection. Those necessary acts are separated from the order in which they may occur perchance, and are thus separated each free from all mixture ; hence, that act is also an act of abstraction. It is impossible to reflect unless you have abstracted. The form of the consciousness, wherein the ne- cessary and general manner of acting oi the intelli- gence is to be received, undoubtedly belongs itself to the necessary modes of acting of the intelligence. Hence, the manner of acting of the intelligence 52 INTRODUCTION. will undoubtedly be received in that consciousness like all its other contents ; and the question whence the science of knowledge is ever to get this form would thus appear to involve no difficulty. But, if we escape the difficulty in the question about the form, the whole difficulty centres in the question about the content. If the necessary manner of acting of the intelligence is to be received into the form of consciousness, it must be already known as such, and hence must have already been received into this form. We are clearly in a circle. This manner of acting is to be separated, ac- cording to the above, by a reflecting abstraction, abstracting from all that this manner of acting is not. This abstraction occurs through freedom, and in it the philosophizing judgment is not led by a blind compulsion. The whole difficulty, therefore, centres in this question : What rules does freedom follow in that separation .-* or how does the philoso- pher know what he is to accept as the necessary manner of acting of the intelligence, and what he is to pass by as accidental .-' Now, this he can not possibly know, unless that which he is first to become conscious of is already in consciousness, which is a contradiction. There is, therefore, and can be, no rule for this procedure. The human mind makes many attempts ; by blind- ly groping it first discovers dawn, and only from dawn does it emerge to the light of day. At first it is led by dark feelings,* (the origin and reality of * Hence it follows that the philosopher requires the dim feelings INTRO D UCTION. 5 3 which the science of knowledge lias to show up ;) and if we had not begun to feel dimly what after- ward we plainly recognized, we should be to-day yet the same lump of clay which arose from the ■earth, lacking all clear conceptions. This indeed the history of philosophy fully proves ; and we have now stated the true ground why that which lies open in every human mind, and which every one can grasp with his hands, if it is clearly ex- posed to him, could only arise to the consciousness of a few, after much straying into error. All phi- losophers have proposed to themselves this same object, all have attempted to separate by reflection the necessary manner of acting of the intelligence from its accidental conditions ; all have thus se- parated it more or less purely and perfectly ; and, on the whole, the philosophizing judgment has steadily made progress, and drawn nearer to its final result. But since that reflection — not in so far as it is undertaken or not undertaken, for in this respect it IS free, as we have seen, but in so far as it is under- taken in accordance with laws, (that is, in so far as it is determined in character, if it is undertaken) — does also belong to the necessary manner of act- ing of the intelligence, its laws would necessarily occur in the system of that manner of acting ; and thus one might well observe — after the science were of the true, or requires genius in no less degree than the poet or the artist, only it is a genius of another kind. The artist requires the sense of beauty, the philosopher the sense of truth. 54 introduction: finished — whether they were correct ; that is, whe- ther they agreed with the former or not. In other words, it would seem that it were possible to fur- nish an evident proof of the correctness of our scientific system after it had been finished. But the laws of reflection, which we would thus discover in the course of the science of knowledge as the only possible ones whereby a science of know- ledge could be possible, are, after all — even though they agree with those laws of reflection which we had presupposed as the rules of our investigation — the result of their previous application, and we thus discover here a new circle. Certain laws of reflection have been presupposed by us ; and now, in the course of the science of knowledge, we discover the same laws as the only correct ones ; ergo, our presupposition has been true, and our science of knowledge is perfectly cor- rect in form. If we had presupposed other laws, we doubtlessly should have discovered other laws in our science of knowledge as the only correct ones, and the only question would have been whe- ther they agreed with the presupposed laws or not. If they did not, we should be sure either that the j' presupposed laws were wrong, or the discovered laws, or, which is most probable, both. It is, there- fore, not allowable to draw such a conclusion in a circle. We merely conclude from the harmony of the presupposed and the discovered laws of reflec- tion that the system is correct. This, to be sure, is only a negative proof, which gives simply proba- introduction: 55 bility. If the presupposed and the discovered laws do not agree, then the system is surely false. If they do agree, it may be correct. But it must not necessarily be correct ; for although — if there is a system in human knowledge — such an agreement or harmony can only be discovered in one way, if the conclusions are rightly drawn, it always remains possible that the harmony may be the result of two incorrectly drawn conclusions, which cancel each other and thus produce harmony. It is as if I tested a calculation of division by multiplication. If I do not obtain the desired sum as product, I may be sure that I have made a mistake in calcu- lating ; but if I do obtain it, it is vaQrely probable that I have calculated correctly ; for I might have made both in division and multiplication the same mistake ; for instance, might in both have counted 5X9= 36. It is thus with the science of know- ledge. That science is not only the rule, but, at the same time, the calculation. Whosoever doubts the correctness of our product, does not on that account doubt the ever-valid law that we must posit the one factor as many times as the other one has units ; he only doubts whether we have cor- rectly observed this law. Hence, even the highest unity of the system, which is the negative proof of its correctness, leaves always something which can never be strictly prov- en, but only accepted as probable ; namely, that this unity has not been the result of chance, or of in- correct conclusions. Various means may be devised 56 INTRODUCTION. to heighten this probabihty ; the series of proposi- tions may be gone over in thought again and again ; one may reverse the method and compare the account from the result back to the fundamental principle ; or one may reflect again upon the reflec- tion, etc., etc. ; the probability always becomes greater, but never becomes certainty. If one is only conscious of having investigated honestly, and not having had in mind the final results one wished to discover, this probability may well suffice, and an objector to the correctness of our system may well be required to show up the error in our conclusions ; but it will never do to claim infallibility. The sys- tem of the human mind, whereof the science of knowledge is to be the representation, is absolutely certain and infallible ; every thing grounded in it is absolutely true ; it never errs, and whatever has ever necessarily been, or ever necessarily will be, in any human soul, is true. If ine7i erred, the fault lay not in the necessary, but in the freedom of re- flection, which substituted one law for another. And if our science of knowledge is a correct representa- tion of this system, it is absolutely certain and in- fallible as that system ; but the very question is, whether our representation is or is not correct, and of this we can never furnish a strict conclusion, but only a probable proof Our science of knowledge has truth only on the condition and in so far as its representation is a correct one. We are not the legislators of the human mind, but its historians ; not newspaper writers, it is true, but pragmatic his- tory-writers. introduction: 57 Add to this the circumstance that a system may really be correct as a whole, though its separate parts have not complete evidence. Here and there an incorrect conclusion may have been drawn, sug- gestive propositions may have been left out, other propositions which can be proven may have been asserted without proof or established by incorrect proof ; and yet the most important results may be correct. This seems impossible ; it seems as if a hair-breadth deviation from the straight line would necessarily lead to infinitely increasing deviation ; and thus indeed it would be if man had to produce all his knowledge by clear conscious thinking ; whereas rather the fundamental genius of reason unconsciously guides him and leads him by new errors from the straight path of his formaliter and logically correct argument back to the materialiter only correct result, which he would never have reached again had he persisted in logically carrying out his wrong proposition. Even, therefore, if a universally valid science of knowledge should be established, the philosophical judgment will still have an infinite field wherein to work its ultimate perfection ; it will have to fill up blanks, to make more strict the proofs, and clearer to determine the determinations. I have two more remarks to add : The science of knowledge presupposes the rules of reflection and abstraction as well known and valid ; it must do so necessarily, and need not be ashamed or make a secret of it. That science may 58 INTRODUCTION. express itself and draw conclusions like any other science, it may presuppose all logical rules and ap- ply all conceptions which it needs. But these pre- suppositions are merely made to make itself intel- ligible ; hence, without drawing any consequences therefrom. Every thing provable must be proven ; with the exception of that first and highest funda- mental principle, all propositions must be deduced. Hence, for instance, neither the logical proposition of opposition or contradiction, which is the ground of all analysis, nor the logical proposition of the ground, (nothing is opposite which is not related in a third, and nothing is related which is not op- posed in a third, the proposition which is the ground of all synthesis,) is deduced from the ab- solute first principle, though they are deduced from the two fundamental principles which rest upon it. These two latter principles are also fundamental principles, it is true, but they are not absolute, only part of them is absolute ; hence, these fundamental principles as well as the logical propositions which rest upon them need not be proven, but must be deduced. I explain myself clearer. That which the science of knowledge establishes is a proposition, thought and put into words ; that in the human mind which corresponds to it is an act of that mind, which in itself need not be thougJu at all. Nothing must be presupposed to this act than that without which the act as act would be impossible ; and this is not tacitly presupposed, but the science of knowledge has to establish it clearly INTRODUCTION. 59 and distinctly as that without which the act would be impossible. Let the act be, for instance, D, the fourth in the series A, B, C, D; then the act C must be preposited to the act D, and shown as the exclusive condition of the act D ; to the act C, again, the act B must be preposited, etc., etc. But the act A, the first act, is absolutely and uncondi- tionally possible ; and hence nothing is to be pre- posited as the condition of its possibility. The thinking of this act A is, however, a quite different act, which presupposes far more. Suppose this thinking of A to be, in the series of acts about to be established, D, then A, B, and C must neces- sarily be presupposed as grounds of its possibility ; and since that thinking (of A) is to be the first business of the science of knowledge. A, B, and C must be tacitly presupposed. It is not till you get to D that the presuppositions of the first can be proven ; but as soon as you get this proof, you will have presupposed something else. The form of the science is thus always in advance of its con- tent ; and this is the reason why the science as such can only attain probability. The represented and the representation are in two different series. In the first series nothing is presupposed which is not proven ; but for the possibility of the second you always must presuppose what can not be proven till later. The reflection which rules in the whole science of knowledge, in so far as it is a science, is a 7'eprcsenting. But from this it does not follow that every thing about which it reflects F 6o introduction: , ^>*'T;) must also be merely a representing. In the science of knowledge the Ego is represented ; but from this it does not follow that the Ego is represented as merely representing ; for other determinations of the Ego maybe discovered in it. The Ego as phi- losophizing subject is undoubtedly merely repre- senting ; but the Ego as object of the philosophizing may be something more. Representing is the highest and absolute first act of the philosopher as such ; but the absolute first act of the human mind may well be of another kind. That it will turn out to be so appears probable, in advance of all expe- rience, from simply this reason : that the repre- sentation may be completely exhausted, and that its acting is altogether necessary, and must, there- fore, have a final ground of its necessity, which, as final ground, can have no higher one. A science, therefore, which is erected on the conception of representation, might well be a very useful intro- duction to the science, but could not be the science of knowledge itself. But this much follows cer- tainly from the above, that the collective modes of acting of the intelligence, which the science of knowledge is to exhaust, can be received in con- sciousness only in the form of representation ; that is to say, only in so far as they are represented. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF THE WHOLE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. § I. — FIRST AND ABSOLUTELY UNCONDITIONED FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE. We have to search for the absolute, first, and un- conditioned fundamental principle of human know- ledge. It can not h^proveji nor deterrnined \i it is to be absolute first principle. This principle is to express that deed-act which does not occur among the empirical determinations of our consciousness, nor can so occur, since it is rather the basis of all consciousness, and first and alone makes consciousness possible. In represent- ing this deed-act it is not so much to be feared that my readers will not think what they ought to think, as that they will think what they ought not to think. This renders necessary a reflection on what may perhaps for the present be taken for that deed-act, and an abstraction from all that does not really belong to it. Even by means of this abstracting reflection, that deed-act, which is not empirical fact of conscious- 64 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. ness, can not become fact of consciousness ; but by means of this abstracting reflection we may recognize so much : that this deed-act must neces- sarily be thought as the basis of all consciousness. The laws* according to which this deed-act must necessarily be thought as basis of human know- ledge, or, which is the same, the rules according to which that abstracting reflection proceeds, have not yet been proven as valid, but are for the present tacitly presupposed as well-known and agreed upon. As we proceed we shall deduce them from^that fun- damental principle, the establishment whereof is correct only if they are correct. This is a circle, but an unavoidable circle. (See our Introduction, § 7.) And since it is unavoidable and freely ad- mitted, it is also allowable to appeal to all the laws of general logic in establishing this highest funda- mental principle. In undertaking this abstracting reflection we must start from some proposition which every one will admit without dispute. Doubtless there are many such. We choose the one which seems to us to open the shortest road to our purpose. In admitting this proposition, the deed-act, which we intend to make the basis of our whole science of knowledge, must be admitted ; and the reflec- tion must show that this deed-act is admitted the moment that proposition is admitted. Our course of proceeding in this reflection is as * The laws of general logic. THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 65 follows : Any fact of empirical consciousness, ad- mitted as such valid proposition, is taken hold of, and from it we separate one of its empirical deter- minations after the other, until only that remains, which can no longer be separated and abstracted from. As such admitted proposition we take this one : A is A. Every one admits this proposition, and without the least hesitation. It is recognized by all as com- pletely certain and evident. If any one should ask a proof of its certainty, no one would enter upon such a proof, but would say : This proposition is absolutely (that is, withojct any further ground) certain ; and by saying this would ascribe to himself the power of absolutely po- siting something. In insisting on the in itself certainty of the above proposition, you posit not that A is. The proposi- tion A is A is by no means equivalent to A is. (Being when posited without predicate is something quite different from being when posited with a pre- dicate.) Let us suppose A to signify a space in- closed within two straight lines, then the proposi- tion A is A would still be correct ; although the proposition A is would be false, since such a space is impossible. But you posit by that proposition : If A is, then A is. The question whether A is at all or not, does not, therefore, occur in it. The content of the propo- sition is not regarded at all : merely its form. The 66 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. question is not whereof you know, but what you know of any given subject. The only thing posit- ed, therefore, by that proposition is the absolutely necessary connection between the two As. This connection we will call X. In regard to A itself nothing has as yet been posited. The question, therefore, arises : Under what condition is A .-* X at least is in the Ego, and posited through the Ego, for it is the Ego which asserts the above proposition, and so asserts it by virtue of X as a law, which X or law must, therefore, be given to the Ego ; and, since it is asserted absolutely, and without fur- ther ground, must be given to the Ego through it- self Whether and how A is posited we do not know ; but since X is to designate a connection between an unknown positing of A (of the first A in the propo- sition A is A) and a positing of the same A, which latter positing is absolute on condition of the first positing, it follows that A, at least in so far as that co7inectio7i is posited, is posited in and tJiroiigJi the Ego, like X. Proof : X is only possible in relation to an A ; now X is really posited in the Ego ; hence, also, A must be posited in the Ego, in so far as X is related to it. X is related to that A, in the above proposition, which occupies the logical position of subject, and also to that A which is the predicate, for both are united by X. Both, therefore, are posited in the Ego, in so far as they are posited ; and the A of the predi- THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 6/ cate is posited absolutely if the first one is posited. Hence, the above proposition may be also express- ed : If A is posited in the Ego, then it is posited, or then it is. Hence, by means of X, the Ego posits : that A is absolutely for the asserting Ego, and is simply be- cause it is posited in the Ego ; or that there is something in the Ego which always remains the same, and is thus able to connect or posit ; and hence the absolutely posited X may also be ex- pressed, Ego = Ego, or I am I. Thus we have already arrived at the proposition I am ; not as expression of a deed-act, it is true, but, at least, as expression of 3. fact. For X is absolutely posited ; this is a fact of empirical consciousness, as shown by the admitted proposition. Now, X signifies the same as I am I ; hence, this proposition is also absolutely posited. But Ego is Ego, or I am I, has quite another sig- nificance than A is A. For the latter proposition had content only on a certain condition, namely, if A is posited. But the proposition I am I is uncon- ditionally and absolutely valid, since it is the same as X ; it is valid not only in form, but also in con- tent. In it the Ego is posited not on condition, but absolutely, with the predicate of self-equality ; hence, it is posited, and the proposition may also be expressed, I am. This proposition, / ajn, is as yet only founded upon a fact, and has no other validity than that of a fact. If "A=A" (or X) is to be certain, then 68 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. " I am " must also be certain. Now, it is fact of empirical consciousness that we are compelled to regard X as absolutely certain ; hence, also, " I am " is certain, since it is the ground of the X. It fol- lows from this, that the ground of explanatioii of all facts of empirical consciousness is this : before all positing, the Ego must be posited throngh itself. (I say of all facts ; and to prove this I must show that X is the highest fact of empirical conscious- ness, is the basis of all others, and contained in all other facts ; which, perhaps, would be admitted by all men without proof, although the whole science of knowledge busies itself to prove it.) The proposition A=iA is asserted. But all as- serting is an act of the human mind ; for it has all the conditions of such an act in empirical con- sciousness, which must be presupposed as well known and admitted in order to advance our re- flection. Now, this act is based on something which has no higher ground, namely, X or I am. Hence, that which is absolntely posited and in it- self grounded is the ground of a certain (we shall see hereafter of all) acting of the human mind ; hence its pure character ; the pure character of activity in itself, altogether abstracting from its par- ticular empirical conditions. The positing of the Ego through itself is, there- fore, the pure activity of the Ego. The 'Ego posits itself- and the Ego is by virtue of this its mere self- positing. Again, vice versa : the Ego is and posits its being, by virtue of its mere being. It is both THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 69 the acting and the product of the act ; the active and the result of the activity ; deed and act in one ; and hence the / am is expressive of a deed-act ; and of the only possible deed-act, as our science of knowledge must show. Let us again consider the proposition / am I. The Ego is absolutely posited. Let us assume that the first Ego of this proposition (which has the position of formal subject) is the absolutely posi- ted Ego, and that the second Ego (that of the pre- dicate) is the being Ego ; then the absolutely valid assertion that both are one signifies : the Ego is, because it has posited itself (This is, indeed, the case according to the logical form of the proposition. In A=A the first A is that which is posited in the Ego, (either absolutely, like the Ego itself, or conditionally, like any non- Ego ;) and in this positing of A the Ego is abso- lute subject ; and hence the first A is also called the subject. But the second A designates that which the Ego, in now making itself the object of its own reflection, discovers thus as posited in itself, (since it has just before itself posited the A in itself) The Ego, in asserting that proposition A=A, predicates in truth not something of A, but of itself, namely, that it has found an A posited in itself; and hence the second A is called predicate.) The Ego in the former and the Ego in the latter significance are to be absolutely equal. Hence, the above proposition may be turned around, and then it reads : The Ego posits itself simply because it is. 70 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. It posits itself through its mere being, and is through its mere being posited. This, then, will explain clearly in what signifi- cance we here use the word Ego, (I,) and will lead us to a definite explanation of the Ego as absolute subject. The Ego as absolute subject is that, the being (essence) whereof consists merely in positing itself as being. As soon as it posits itself, it is ; and as soon as it is, it posits itself; and hence the Ego is for the Ego absolute and necessary. What- soever is not for itself is not an Ego. Illnstratiojt. The question has been asked. What was I before I became self-conscious .-' The answer is, / was not at all, for I was not I. The Ego is only, in so far as it is conscious of itself. The possibility of that question is grounded upon a mixing up of the Ego as subject, and the Ego as object of the reflection of the absolute subject ; and is in itself altogether improper. The Ego represents itself, and in so far takes itself up in the form of representation, and now first becomes a somewhat, that is, an object. Consciousness receives in this form of representa- tion a substrate, which is, even without the real consciousness, and which, moreover, is thought bodily. Such a condition is thought, and the ques- tion asked. What was the Ego at that time } that is, what is the substrate of consciousness ? But even in this thought you unconsciously add in thinking the absolute subject as looking at that sub- THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 7 1 strate ; and hence you unconsciously add in thought the very thing whereof you wanted to abstract, and thus you contradict yourself. The truth is, you can not think any thing at all without adding in thought your Ego as self-conscious ; you can not abstract from your self-consciousness ; and all questions of the above kind are not to be an- swered, since, maturely considered, they can not be asked. If the Ego is only in so far as it posits itself, then it also is only for the positing, and posits only for the being Ego. The Ego is for the Ego; but if it posits itself absolutely, as it is, then it posits itself necessarily, and is necessary for the Ego. / am only forme; but for me I am necessarily, (By saying for me, I already posit my being.) To posit itself and to be is, applied to the Ego, the same. Hence, the proposition I am because I have posited myself, can also be expressed : / am absolutely because I am. Again, the Ego as positing itself and the Ego as being are one and the same. The Ego is as ivhat it posits itself, and posits itself as what it is. Hence, T am absolutely zvhat I am. The immediate expression of the thus developed deed-act may be given in the following formula : / nm absolutely because I am, and I am absolutely what I am for myself If this narration of the original deed-act is to be placed at the head of a science of knowledge 72 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. as its highest fundamental principle, it may perhaps be best expressed thus : The Ego posits originally its own Being. (In other words, the Ego is necessarily identity of subject and object ; is itself subject-object ; and it is this without further mediation.) We started from the proposition A=A, not as if the proposition, I am, could be proven by it, but be- cause we had to start from some one certain propo- sition, given in empirical consciousness. And our development, also, has shown that A=A does not contain the ground of " I am," but, on the contrary, that the latter proposition is the ground of the former. By abstracting from the content of the proposi- tion I am, and looking merely to its form, namely, the form of drawing a conclusion from the being posited of something to its being, as we must ab- stract for the sake of logic, we thus obtain as fim- damental principle of logic the proposition A=A, which can only be proven and determined through the science of knowledge. Proven : for A is A be- cause the Ego which has. posited A is the same as the Ego in which A is posited. Determined : for whatever is, is only in so far as it is posited in the Ego, and there is nothing outside of the Ego. No possible A (no tJmig) can be any thing else but an A posited in the Ego. By abstracting, moreover, from all asserting as a determined acting, and looking merely to the gene- ral manner of acting of the human mind, which is THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 73 given through that form, we obtain the category of reality. Every thing to which the proposition A=A is appHcable has reahty, in so far as that proposition is applicable to it. That which is posited through the mere positing of any thing (in the Ego) is its reality, its essence. Remarks. Kant, in his deduction of the categories, has hint- ed at our proposition as absolute fundamental prin- ciple of all knowledge ; but he has never definitely established it as fundamental principle. Before Kant, Descartes has suggested a similar one, Cogito, ergo sitm ; which, however, is not necessarily the minor and conclusion of a syllogism, of which the viajorvioyAdi have to be, Quodcunqice cogitat, est ; but which he may also have viewed as immediate fact of consciousness. In that case it would signify, Cogitans snm, ergo sum, (or, as we should say. Stent, ergo sum) But in that case the word cogitans is completely superfluous ; you do not tJmik necessa- rily when you arc, but you are necessarily when you think. Thinking is not the essence, but merely a particular determination of the Ego ; and there are many other determinations of the Ego. Reinhold speaks of representation, and his fun- damental principle would read in the Cartesian form, Reprcssento, ergo snm ; or, more correctly, Rcprcuscn- tans sum, ergo sum. He goes considerably further than Descartes, but not far enough ; for representa- 74 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. tion, also, is not the essence of the Ego, but merely a particular determination of the Ego ; and there are many other determinations of the Ego, although they certainly must pass througJi the medium of rep- '^jesentation in order to enter empirical consciousness. Spinoza, on the other hand, goes beyond our proposition in its established significance. He does not deny the unity of empirical consciousness, but he utterly denies its pure consciousness. According to him the whole series of representations of a sin- gle empirical subject is related to the only one pure subject, as a single representation is related to the whole series. In his view the Ego (that is, that which he calls his Ego, or which I call my Ego) is not absolutely because it is, but because somethitig else is. True, he considers the Ego to be Ego for the Ego ; but he asks what it may be for something outside of the Ego. Such an " outside of the Ego" would also be an Ego, of which the posited Ego (for instance, my Ego) and all possible Egos would be modifications. He separates the pure and the ^»«/zV/<:«/ consciousness. The first he posits in God, who never becomes self-conscious, since pure con- sciousness never attains consciousness ; the latter he posits in the particular modifications of the God- head. His system, thus established, is perfectly logical and not to be refuted, because he has entered a sphere where reason can not follow him ; but his system is also groundless, for what justified him in going beyond the pure consciousness given in empirical consciousness ? THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 7S § 2. SECOND, AND IN REGARD TO ITS CONTENT, CONDITIONED FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE. For the same reason why the first fundamental principle could not be proven or deduced, the sec- ond, also, can not be proven. Hence, we here, also, proceed from a fact of empirical consciousness in the same manner. The proposition not A is not A will doubtless be recognized by every one as certain, and it is scarce- ly to be expected that any one will ask for its proof. If, however, such a proof were possible, it must in our system be deduced from the proposition A=A. But such a proof is impossible. For let us as- sume, at the utmost, that the above proposition is the same as — A is — A, (and hence that — A is equal to some Y posited in the Ego,) and that for this reason our proposition signifies now : if the opposite of A is posited, ^/im it is posited ; still we should only have the same connection posited (X) which we obtain- ed in our § i, and our proposition, — A is not A, in- stead of being derived from A=A, would, after all, be only the very same proposition. The chief question, Is the opposite of A posited, and under what condition of form of mere acting is it posited 1 is altogether ignored. If our second proposition were a derived one, then this condition of the form of acting would have to be derived from the propo- sition A=A. But how can the proposition A=A, J'J THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. which involves only the form of positing, also in- volve the form of oppositing ? Hence, that form of acting, the oppositing, is posited absolutely, and with no attached condition. — A is posited as such simply becmise it is posited. Hence, as sure as the proposition — A not = A occurs among the facts of empirical consciousness, there occurs among the acts of the Ego an oppos- iting ; and this oppositing, as far as lisform is con- cerned, is absolutely and unconditionally possible, and is an acting which has no higher ground. Through this absolute act the opposite, as mere opposite, is posited. Every opposite, in so far as it is merely opposite, is simply by virtue of an abso- lute act of the Ego, and has no other ground. Opposition generally is simply posited through the Ego. But if any — A is to be posited, an A must be po- sited. Hence, the act of oppositing is also, in an- other respect, conditioned. Whether the act at all is possible depends upon another act ; hence, the act in its content, as acting generally, is conditioned ; it is an acting in relation to another acting. The form of the act, however, (the How 1 namely, that it is not an act of positing, but of oppositing,) is uncon- ditioned. (Opposition is only possible on condition of the unity of consciousness of the positing and the op- positing. For if the consciousness of the first act were not connected with that of the second, then the second positing would not be an tT/'-positing, THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. "J J but an absolute positing. Oppositing it becomes only through its relation to a positing. As yet we have only spoken of the act, as mere act, of the manner of acting. Let us now examine its product, = — A. In — A we can again distinguish form and con- tent. Through the form is determined, that it is an opposite ; the content determines that it is an oppo- site of a determined something, (of A,) that it is not this something. The form of — A is determined simply through the act ; it is an opposite because it is product of an oppositing ; the content is determined through A : it is not what A is, and its whole essence consists in this, that it is not what A is. I know of — A simply that it is the opposite of A. But %uhat that is wJiere- of I know this, I can only know by knowing A. Originally only the Ego is posited, and this alone is absolutely posited. (§ i.) Hence, an absolute oppositing can only refer to the Ego. The opposite of the Ego we call Non-Ego. As sure as the proposition — A is not A is un- conditionally admitted as fact of empirical con- sciousness, a non-Ego is absolutely opposited to the Ego. All we have said above in reference to opposit- ing generally, is deduced from this original opposit- ing, and hence is valid for it ; it is, therefore, uncon- ditioned in form, but conditioned in content. And thus we have also found the second principle of all human knowledge. 78 7'HE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. Whatsoever appertains to the Ego, of that the opposite must appertain to tlie non-Ego. (The general opinion is, that the conception of the non-Ego is a discursive conception, obtained by abstracting from all objects of representation. But the foolishness of this explanation can be easily demonstrated. If I am to represent an object, I must posit it in opposition to the representing sub- ject. Now, it is true that in the object of repre- sentation there can and must be an X, whereby it discovers itself to be not the representing, but a represented ; but no object of representation can possibly teach me, that every thing wherein this X occurs is represented object, and not representing subject ; on the contrary, only by presupposing this law do I attain any object.) By undertaking the same abstraction with this proposition, which we undertook with the first, we obtain the logical proposition — A is not A, which I should call the proposition of oppositing. In the present place, this proposition can not yet be pro- perly determined, or expressed in a formula, the reason whereof will appear in the following section. By abstracting from the determined act of as- serting this proposition, and looking merely to the form of drawing a conclusion from the being op- posited of something to its being, we obtain the category of jtegatio7t. This also can not be clearly developed till in the following section. THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 79 § 3. THIRD, IN ITS FORM CONDITIONED FUNDA- MENTAL PRINCIPLE. Every step we take in our science brings us nearer to the point where every thing can be proven. In the first principle, nothing could be nor was to be proven ; in the second, only the act of oppositing was not provable ; but, this act once admitted, it was strictly shown that the opposite must be a Non-Ego. The third principle is al- most throughout capable of proof, since it is not, like the second, conditioned in content, but only in form, and, moreover, conditioned in form by the tivo foregoing propositions. It is conditioned in form signifies, the problem of the act it establishes is given by the two foregoing propositions, but not the solution of the problem. The solution is the result of an unconditioned and absolute act of reason. We therefore commence with a deduction, and proceed as far as we can go. When we can go no further, we shall have to appeal to this absolute act. I. In so far as the Non-Ego is posited, the Ego is not posited ; for the Non-Ego completely cancels the Ego. Now, the Non-Ego is posited in the Ego, for it is opposited ; and all oppositing presupposes the iden- tity of the Ego. Hence, the Ego is not posited in the Ego in so far as the Non-Ego is posited in it. So THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 2. But the Non-Ego can only be posited in so far as an Ego is posited in the Ego, (in the identical consciousness,) as the opposite of which it is posi- ted. Hence, in so far as the Non-Ego is posited in the Ego, the Ego also must be posited in it. 3. The conclusions of our ist and 2d are op- posed to each other ; yet both are developed from the second fundamental principle ; hence, that second principle is opposed to itself and cancels itself 4. But it cancels itself only in so far as the pos- ited is canceled by the opposited, hence in so far as itself is valid. Hence, it does not cancel itself The second fun- damental principle cancels itself and does not can- cel itself 5. If this is the case with the second principle, it must also be with the first principle. That first prin- ciple cancels itself and does not cancel itself For, If Ego is = Ego, then all is posited, which is pos- ited in the Ego. Now, the second principle is to be posited and not to be posited in the Ego. Hence, Ego is not = Ego, but Ego is = to the Non-Ego, and Non-Ego = Ego. All these results have been deduced from the established principles according to the laws of reflection presupposed as valid ; they must be cor- rect, therefore. But if they are correct, the identity of consciousness, the only absolute foundation of THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 8 1 our knowledge, is canceled. This determines our problem. We must find an X, by means of which all these results may be correct, without destroying the identity of consciousness. 1. The opposites, to be united, are in the Ego as consciousness. Hence, X must also be in con- sciousness. 2. Both the Ego and Non-Ego are products of original acts of the Ego, and consciousness itself is such a product of the first original act of the Ego, of the positing of the Ego through itself, 3. But our above results show that the act of which the Non-Ego is the product, that is, the op- positing, is not at all possible without X. Hence, X itself must be a product of an original act of the Ego. There must be, accordingly, an act of the human mind = Y, the product of which is X. 4. The form of this act Y is determined by the above problem. It is to be a uniting of the oppo- sites (the Ego and the Non-Ego) without their mu- tually canceling each other. The opposites are to be taken up into the identity of consciousness. 5. But the problem does not determine the How, or the manner of this uniting, nor even suggests it at all. We must, therefore, make an experiment, and ask : How can A and — A, being and not be- ing, reality and negation, be thought together, without their mutually canceling each other .-* 6. It is not to be expected that any one will re- ply otherwise but : They must mutually limit each other. If this answer is correct, the act Y is a S2 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. limiting of both opposites through each other, and X would signify the limits. (Let me not be understood as asserting that the conception of Hmits is an analytical conception, in- volved in, and to be developed out of, the union of reality and negation. It is true our two funda- mental principles have given us the opposite con- ceptions, and our first principle has given us the requirement to unite them. But the mamier of uniting them has not been given, and is determined by a particular law of our mind, which law our ex- periment was only to make us conscious of) 7. The conception of limits, however, involves more than the required X ; for it involves also the conceptions of reality and negation, which are to be united. Hence, to get X pure, we must under- take another abstraction. 8. To limit something signifies to cancel the re- ality thereof not altogether, but only in part. Hence the conception of limits involves, besides the con- ceptions of reality and negation, that of divisibility, (of qiiajitit ability generally, not of a determined quantity.) This conception is the required X, and hence, through the act Y, the Ego as well as the Non-Ego is posited divisible. 9. The Ego as zvell as the Non-Ego are posited divisible ; for the act Y can not suceeed the act of oppositing, for in itself the act of oppositing has shown itself impossible ; nor can it precede that act, for the act Y occurs merely to make the act of oppositing possible ; and divisibility is nothing THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 83 but a divisible. Hence, the act Y and the act of oppositing occur in and with each other ; both are one and the same, and are only distinguished in re- flection. By oppositing, therefore, a Non-Ego to the Ego, both the Ego and the Non-Ego are posited divisible. Let us now see whether the here established act has really solved the problem and united the op- posites. The first result is now determined as follows : The Ego is not posited in the Ego in so far, that is, with those parts of reality wherewith the Non-Ego is posited. That part of reality, which is ascribed to the Non-Ego, is canceled in the Ego. This proposition at present does not contra- dict the second result : in so far as the Non-Ego is posited, the Ego also must be posited ; for both are posited as divisible in regard to their reality. And only now can you say of either, it is some- thing. For the absolute Ego of the first funda- mental principle is not sometJiing, (has no predicate and can have none ;) it is simply what it is. But now all reality is in consciousness, and of this reality that part is to be ascribed to the Non-Ego which is not to be ascribed to the Ego, and vice versa. Both are something. The Non-Ego is what the Ego is not, and vice versa. Opposed to the abso- lute Ego, the Non-Ego is absolutely nothing, (but it can be opposed to the absolute Ego only in so far as it is an object of representation, as we shall see 84 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. hereafter ;) opposed to the divisible Ego, the Non- Ego is a negative quantity. The Ego is to be = Ego, and yet it is also to be opposed to itself. But it is self-equal in regard to consciousness ; and in this consciousness the abso- lute Ego is posited as indivisible, and the Ego, to which the Non-Ego is opposed, as divisible. Hence, in the unity of consciousness, all the opposites are united ; for in it even the Ego, in so far as a Non- Ego is opposed to it, is opposed to the absolute Ego ; and this is, as it were, the test that the es- tablished conception of divisibility was the correct one. According to our presupposition, which can be proven only through the completion of the science of knowledge, only one absolute unconditioned, one in its content conditioned, and one in its form con- ditioned principle is possible. Hence, no further principle can be possible. All that is uncondition- ally and absolutely certain has been exhausted, and I might express the total in this formula : The Ego opposits in the Ego a divisible Non-Ego to a divisible Ego. Beyond this cognition no philosophy can go ; but every thorough philosophy ought to go to it, and by doing so will become science of knowledge. Whatsoever is hereafter to occur in the system of the human mind must be deducible from what we have here established. THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. REMARKS. We have united the opposites, Ego and Non-Ego, through the conception of divisibility. By ab- stracting from the content (the Ego and Non-Ego) and looking at the mere form of tmiting opposites ihrougJi the conceptioji of divisibility, we obtain the logical proposition of the ground ; that is, A is in part — A, and vice versa. Every opposite is re- lated to its opposite in one characteristic = X ; and all equals are opposed to each other in one characteristic X, Such an X is called, in the first instance, ground of relation; in the second in- stance, ground of distinctioji. This logical propo- sition our third fundamental principle both proves and determines. Proves : for every opposite = —A is opposed to an A, and this A is posited. Through the positing of a —A you both cancel and do not cancel A. Hence, you only cancel A in part ; and instead of the X in A, which is not canceled, you have pos- ited in —A not —X, but X itself; and hence A is = —A in X. Again, every opposite (= A = B) is self-equal by virtue of being posited in the Ego : A = A, B = B. Now, you posit B = A ; hence, B is not posited through A, for then it would be = A and not = B. (You would have only posited one, and not two.) But if B is not posited through the positing of A, then it is in so far = — A ; and through the S6 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. positing of both as equal, neither A nor B, but an X, is posited, which X is = X and = A and = B. Thus it appears how tlie proposition A = B can be vahd, which in itself contradicts the proposition A = A. X = X, A = X, B = X ; hence, A = B in so far as both is = X ; but A = — B in so far as both is = — X. Opposites are related and equals opposed to each other in only one part. For, if they were op- posed in many parts, that is, if the opposites them- selves contained opposite characteristics, one of both would belong to that wherein they are equal, and hence they would not be opposites, and vice versa. Every grounded judgment has, therefore, only one ground of relation and one ground of dis- tinction. If it has more, it is not one judgment, but many judgments. Determmes : for only on condition that many things are posited at all as equals or as opposites, are they thus opposed or related in one character- istic. But it is by no means asserted that abso- lutely every thing which may occur in our conscious- ness, must be equal to another and opposed to a third. A judgment, therefore, concerning that to which nothing can be related or opposed, does not come at all under the rule of this proposition of the ground, for it is not under the condition of its va- lidity ; it is not grounded, since, on the contrary, itself grounds all possible judgments ; it has no ground, but furnishes itself the ground of all THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 8/ grounded. The object of all such judgments is the absolute Ego, and all judgments, whereof it is the subject, are valid absolutely and without further ground ; whereof more below. The act whereby, in comparing a twofold, you look up the mark wherein they are opposites, is called the antitlietical proceeding, generally spoken of as analytical, which expression, however, is less proper ; partly because it permits the opinion that you can develop something out of a conception which you have not previously put into it by a syn- thesis, and partly because the expression aiitithet- ical signifies more clearly that it is the opposite of synthetical. For the syntJictical proceeding con- sists in this, that in opposites that characteristic is looked up wherein they are equal. In the mere logical form, judgments of the first class are called antithetical or negative, and judgments of the lat- ter class synthetical or affirmative judgments. Again : since we discovered, in the development of our third principle, that the act of uniting opposites in a third is not possible without the act of opposit- ing, and vice versa, it also follows that in logic anti- thesis and synthesis are inseparable. No anti- thesis — no positing of equals as opposites — without synthesis — without the previous positing of the equals as equals. No synthesis — no positing of opposites as equals — without antithesis — without the previous positing of the opposites as opposites. (As far as the content is concerned, mere analytical judgments have, therefore, no existence ; and not S3 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. only do they not carry us far, as Kant remarks, but they do not advance us a single step.) Kant's celebrated question, which he placed at the head of his Critic of Pure Reason, How are syn- thetical judgments a priori possible ? has now been answered in the most universal and satisfactory manner. In our third principle we have estab- lished a synthesis between the opposites. Ego and Non-Ego, by means of the posited divisibility of both, concerning the possibility of which no further question can be asked nor any further ground as- signed ; it is absolutely possible, and we are justi- fied in establishing it without further ground. All other syntheses, which are to be valid, must be in- volved in this one ; must have been established in and with this one ; and as soon as this is proven, the most convincing proof has been shown up that they are equally valid. Must be involved in this one ; and this shows us at the same time in the most determined manner, how we must henceforth proceed in the develop- ment of our science. It is syntheses we are to ob- tain, and hence our whole course of proceeding hereafter will be synthetical ; every proposition will contain a synthesis. (At least in the theoretical part of our science, for in the practical part the very reverse is the case, as will appear hereafter.) But no synthesis is possible without a previous ana- lysis ; from this analysis, however, in so far as it is an act, we abstract, and only look up its product — the opposites. Hence, at every proposition here- THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 89 after* we shall begin by looking up the opposites in- volved in it, and which are to be united. Again, all our syntheses are to be involved in the high- est synthesis, just shown up, and to be developed out of it. Hence, it will be our task to look up in the Ego and Non-Ego, which that synthesis unites, some opposite characteristics, which have not been united ; and to unite these opposites through a new ground of relation, which, again, must be in- volved in the highest ground of relation ; next, it will be our task to look up new opposites in the op- posites united by this second synthesis, and to unite them in a third synthesis ; and to continue this course until we arrive at opposites which can no longer be perfectly united, whereby we shall then be forced to enter the practical part of our science. As antithesis is not possible without synthesis, and vice vei'sa, so neither is possible without a the- sis ; that is, without an absolute positing, whereby a certain A (the Ego) is posited, not as the equal of any other, nor as the opposite of any other, but is absolutely posited. This, when applied to our sys- tem, gives it completeness and surety. It must be a system and one system ; the opposites must be united so long as opposites still exist, and until the absolute unity is produced ; which absolute unity, as will be shown hereafter, can, however, only be produced by a completed approach to the infinite, that is to say, never in time. The necessity to opposit and unite in the above determined manner, rests immediately on our third 90 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. fundamental principle ; the necessity to unite at all, rests on the first highest and absolutely uncondi- tioned principle. Th.Q form of the system is ground- ed in the highest synthesis ; but that a system is to be at all, is grounded in the absolute thesis. There is, however, another apphcation of our above remark which can not be left unnoticed here ; that is, its apphcation to the form of judg- ments. For as we had synthetical and antithetical judgments, we shall also doubtless find thetical judgments, which in some respect will be utterly opposed to the former. For the correctness of an- tithetical and synthetical judgments always pre- supposed a ground, and a double ground, namely, one of relation and one of distinction. A thetical judgment would, therefore, be one wherein some- thing would not be related or opposed to another, but would only be posited as equal to itself ; hence, it would presuppose neither a ground of distinction nor of relation. But since the logical form requires some presupposition, this presupposition in theti- cal judgments could only be a problem to find a ground. The highest judgment of this kind is / am, wherein nothing is asserted of the Ego, the place of the predicate being left empty for any possible infinite determination of the Ego. All other judg- ments (involved in this highest one) are of the same kind. For instance, Man is free. You may consider this either as a positive judgment — in which case it signifies, man belongs to the class of free THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 9 1 beings ; and in that case a ground of relation ought to be shown up between man and the class of free beings, which ground as ground of that freedom ought to be contained in the conception of free be- ings generally, and particularly of man ; but, far from being able to show up such a ground, we can not even point out a class of free beings ; or you may consider it as a negative judgment, in which case you posit man in opposition to all beings, which are subject to the law of natural necessity ; but then you must first point out the ground of dis- tinction between necessity and not-necessity ; and you must show that the latter is not involved in the conception of man, but is involved in the concep- tion of the opposite beings ; and at the same time you must show a ground of relation wherein both are equal. But man, in so far as the predicate of freedom can be applied to him, that is, in so far as he is absolute, and not represented nor representa- ble subject, has nothing in common with the beings of nature, and hence also is not to be opposited to them. Still, the logical form of the judgment, which is positive, demands that both conceptions be united. But they can not be united in any concep- tion, and can only be united in the idea of an Ego, the consciousness whereof is determined by noth- ing external, but which rather through its mere con- sciousness determines all external ; and such an idea itself is not thinkable, but involves for us a contra- diction. Yet it is posited for us as our highest 92 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. practical destination. Man is to draw infinitely nearer to the in itself unattainable freedom. Thus, again, the aesthetical judgment : A is beau- tiful (that is, in A is a characteristic which is also in the idea of the beautiful) is a thetical judgment ; for I can not compare that characteristic with the ideal, since I do not know the ideal. It is rather a problem given to me, which is the result of my ab- solute self-positing, to discover that ideal ; but this problem can only be solved in a completed attain- ment of the infinite, that is, never in time. Hence, Kant and his successors have called these judgments very properly infinite judgments ; al- though not one, so far as I know, has explained them in a clear and definite manner. It appears, therefore, that for thetical judgments no ground can be adduced ; but their general pos- sibility and validity is grounded in the absolute self-positing of the Ego. It is useful, and will fur- nish the clearest insight into our science, if this manner of grounding thetical judgment is compared with that of grounding antithetical and synthetical judgments. All opposites, which are opposed in a conception expressing their ground of distinction, agree in a higher (more universal) conception, which is called the conception of species ; that is, a synthesis is presupposed, which contains both opposites, and in so far as they are equal to each other. Gold and silver, for instance, are contained in the higher con- ception of metal. (Hence, the logical rule of defi- THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 93 nition, that it must state the higher conception, the ground of relation, and the specific difference, which constitutes the ground of distinction.) Again, all equals are opposed to each other in a lower conception, expressive of some particular determination abstracted from in the higher concep- tion ; that is, all synthesis presupposes a previous antithesis. For instance, in the conception Body, you abstract from the peculiar determination of color, weight, smell, etc. ; and hence any thing which fills space, and is impenetrable, and has weight, may now be a body, however different in regard to those specific determinations. (The science of knowledge determines what determinations are more universal or more special, and hence what conceptions are higher or lower. A conception is higher in pro- portion as the mediating conceptions, whereby it is deduced from the highest, (that of reality,) are less. Y is a lower conception than X, if X occurs first in the series of its deduction from the highest conception, and vice vej^sa.) Quite different is it in regard to the absolutely posited, the Ego. A Non-Ego is posited in relation to it, and at the same in opposition to it, not in a higher conception, however, (which in that case would contain both, and would presuppose a higher synthesis, or at least a higher thesis,) but in a lower conception. The Ego itself is posited into a lower conception, that of divisibility, so that it may be posited in relation (equality) to the Non-Ego ; and in the same conception of divisibility it is also op- 94 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. posited to the Non-Ego. Hence, there is here iro ascent, as in every other synthesis, but a descent. The Ego and the Non-Ego, as posited in equahty and opposition to each other, are both something (accidences) in the Ego, as divisible substance, and posited through the Ego as absolute and unli- mitable substance, to which nothing is equal and nothing opposed. Hence, all judgments, of which the limitable or determinable Ego is logical sub- ject, or of which something that determines the Ego is logical subject, must be limited or deter- mined through something higher ; but all judg- ments, of which the absolute, undeterminable Ego is logical subject, can be determined by nothing higher, because the absolute Ego is determined through nothing higher; they have their ground and their determination altogether in themselves. Now, in this consists the essence of critical philo- sophy, that an absolute Ego is established as abso- lutely unconditioned and determinable by nothing higher than itself ; and in following up the results of this fundamental principle that philosophy be- comes science of knowledge. On the other hand, that philosophy is called dog- matic, which establishes something else as both equal and opposed to the Ego ; which something else is its pretendedly higher conception of the thing (etts) arbitrarily established by that philo- sophy as the highest of all conceptions. In critical philosophy the thing is posited in the Ego, in dog- matic philosophy the Ego in the thing ; critical phi- THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 95 losophy is, therefore, immanent, because it posits all in the Ego ; dogmatism is, on the contrary, transcen- dent, because it proceeds beyond the Ego. In so far as dogmatism can be logical, Spinozism is its most logical product. If you wish to treat dogmatism from its own stand-point, as should be done, ask it why it assumes a thing in itself without higher ground, whereas it did ask for a higher ground in the case of the Ego. Ask the dogmatist. Why do you accept the thing as absolute, since you would not accept the Ego as absolute .'' He can show no warrant for so doing, and you are perfectly justified in requiring him to hold fast to his own principles, and to assume nothing without a ground ; hence, to give you again a higher conception as the ground of the thing, and then again a higher con- ception for that higher conception, and so on ad infinitum. A thorough dogmatism either denies altogether that our knowledge has a ground, and that there is a system in the human mind, or it contradicts it- self A logical dogmatism is a skepticism, which doubts that it doubts, for it must cancel the unity of consciousness, and hence the whole logic. It is, therefore, no dogmatism, and contradicts itself by pretending to be one. Thus Spinoza posits the ground of the unity of consciousness in a substance wherein it is neces- sarily determined as well in regard to its content ^that is, in regard to its determined series of repre- sentation) as in regard to its form of unity. But I g6 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. ask him : What, then, is that, again, which contains the ground of the necessity of this substance, as well in regard to its content (in regard to the dif- ferent series of representations contained in it) as in regard to its form, (the form that in it all possible series of representation are to be exhausted, and to constitute a complete whole ?) Now for this ne- cessity he gives no further ground, but says : It is so absolutely ; and he says this because he is com- pelled to assume some absolute first, some highest unity ; but if he wants to do this, why did he not stop at the unity given in consciousness ? Why did he go beyond and imagine a higher unity, since nothing forced him to do so ?* It would be absolutely impossible to explain how thinkers ever could have gone beyond the Ego, or, if they once went beyond it, how they ever could have come to a stand-still, if there were not a prac- tical reason which explains this phenomenon. It was a practical and not a theoretical ground, as they believed, which drove dogmatists to transcend the Ego ; namely, a feeling of the dependence of our Ego, in so far as it is practical, upon a Non- Ego, which is in so far absolutely not subject to our legislation, and which is hence in so far free. Again, it was a practical reason which compelled ( Translator's Note. — This criticism of Spinoza applies with equal force to the school of dogmatic idealists which followed Fichte, and which found its highest representatives in Schelling and Hegel. Believing that they must go beyond the Ego and discover some other absolute — not so " subjective," as they foolishly fancied the Ego to be — they fell into the same pit.) THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 97 them to come to a stand-still somewhere ; namely, the feeling of necessary subordination of the Non- Ego to the practical laws of the Ego. But this subordination has not at all existence as object of a conception, but simply as object of an idea ; as something which is to be effected through us in an endless time, as will appear hereafter. And thus it appears, after all, that dogmatism is not at all what it pretends to be, and that we have done it wrong in logically carrying out its princi- ples. Its highest unity is indeed no other one than the unity of consciousness, and can be no other one ; and its thing is the substrate of divisibility generally, or the highest substance, wherein both the Ego and the Non-Ego ( Spinoza s Intelligence and Extension) are posited. Far from going beyond the absolute Ego, it never reaches even so far ; at the utmost, as in Spinoza's system, it goes to our second and third principles, but not to the first unconditioned one. It was reserved for critical philosophy to take this last step, and thus to complete the science. The first part of our system (the theoretical) is really, as will be seen hereafter, systematic Spino- zism ; but our system also has a second, practical part, through which the first part is grounded and determined, the whole science of knowledge com- pleted, every thing which occurs in the human mind exhausted, and thus common-sense, which all pre-Kantian philosophy insulted, and which our theoretical system seems to bring into a collision q8 the science of knowledge. with philosophy, which has no hope of ever being settled, forever reconciled with our science. By completely abstracting from the determined form of the judgment in our third principle, name- ly, that it is an oppositing or r^/<;?/z;/^ judgment, and looking only at the general manner of acting in it, namely, to limit one through another, we obtain the category of detenfiination, (or, as Kant calls it, limitation.) For the positing of quantity generally, be it quantity of reality or of negation, is called determining. II. THEORETICAL PART OF THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. THEORETICAL PART OF THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. INTRODUCTORY. We have now established three logical proposi- tions : that of Identity, which grounds all others ; and those of Opposition and of the Ground, which mutually ground each other in the first. The latter two make synthesis generally possible, establish and furnish the ground of its form. Hence, we need nothing more to be certain of the formal validity of our future reflection. On the other hand, the first synthetical act, whereby we have united the Ego and the Non-Ego, has given us a content for all future syntheses ; and, hence, we also need nothing further from this side. Our whole science of knowledge must be developed out of that first synthesis. But, if any thing is to be developed out of it, the conceptions united in that synthesis must contain other conceptions not yet established or united, and our task is, therefore, now to discover them ; which is done by looking up opposite character- 102 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. istics in the conceptions of that synthesis, (which opposites were the Ego and Non-Ego, as mutually determining each other,) and this looking up is done through reflection, which is an arbitrary act of our mind. Our task is to discover them now, I said ; and this expression involves the presupposi- tion that they exist already, and are not, therefore, to be artificially made and produced by our reflection, (which, indeed, reflection could not do.) In other words, an originally necessary antithetical act of the Ego is presupposed. Reflection has to dis- cover that act ; and is in so far analytical. For to become conscious of opposite characteristics con- tained in a certain conception = A, as opposites, is, to analyze that conception A. In the present instance, however, our reflection is to analyze a conception, not at all given, but which must first be found through the analysis ; and the question arises here, therefore. How can an unknown con- ception be analyzed ? No antithetical act without a synthetical act, (§ 3.) Both are one and the same act, distinguished only in reflection. Hence, from the antithesis we can conclude as to the synthesis, and the third, wherein both are related, we can also establish ; not as pro- duct of the reflection, but as its discovery ; and as product only of that original synthetical act of the Ego ; which, for the very reason that it is such act, can not enter empirical consciousness. Hence, we shall hereafter meet only such synthetical acts, but which are not unconditional acts like the first. THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. IO3 Our deduction proves, however, that they are acts of the Ego ; for this they are as sure as the first synthesis, from which they result, and with which they constitute one and the same, is an act of the Ego ; and that first synthesis is such an act as sure as the highest deed-act of the Ego, that is, its self- positing, is such an act. Hence, the acts we shall hereafter establish ari^ synthetical, although the reflection which establishes them is analytical. Those antitheses, however, which have been pre- supposed for the possibility of an analysis through reflection, must be thought as presupposed, that is, as such from which the possibility of our future synthetical conceptions is dependent. But no anti- thesis is possible without synthesis. Hence, a higher synthesis is presupposed in advance of them, and our first business must be to look this synthesis up and establish it definitely. True, it has been already established in our § 3. But it may appear necessary to determine it in this part of our work more definitely. DIREMPTION OF THE SYNTHESIS. The synthesis of our § 3 was this : In and through the Ego both the Ego and th& Non-Ego are posited as each liviitable tJirongh the other ; that is, the reality of the one canceling that of the other, and vice versa. This synthesis involves the following two pro- positions : IC4 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. I. TJic Ego posits the Non-Ego as limited through the Ego. This proposition, which, in the practical part of our science will be of vast importance, seems use- less to us here. For as yet the Non-Ego is noth- ing, has no reality ; and it is, therefore, inconceiv- able how the Ego can limit a reality in the Non- Ego, which the Non-Ego has not got as yet. True, the proposition from which it results, the Ego and Non-Ego mutually limit each other, is posited ; but v/hether that proposition really involves the present one is the as yet problematical part. Perhaps the Ego can only be limited by the Non-Ego, in so fax as it has first limited the Non-Ego, as the limiting has first proceeded from the Ego. Perhaps the Non-Ego does not limit the Ego in itself at all, but only the liniiting of the Ego ; in which case our synthesis would remain true, although no reality were ascribed to the Non-Ego, and although the above problematical proposition were not involved in the synthesis. 2. The Ego posits itself as limited through the Non-Ego. Of this proposition we can make use, and it must be accepted as certain, since it follows from the synthesis. For in it the Ego is posited first as ab- solute reality, and next as limitable reality, and limitable through the Non-Ego, It will appear that the second proposition grounds the theoretical part of our science, of course only after its completion ; and that the first one grounds THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. I05 the practical part of our science. But since the first one is itself problematical, the possibility of such a practical part also remains as yet problem- atical. Hence, our reflection must proceed from the theoretical part, although it will appear here- after that, far from it making possible the practical part, the practical part, on the contrary, makes pos- sible it. (Reason is in itself only practical, and becomes theoretical only in applying its laws to a limiting Non-Ego.) In other words, this seeming subordination in our system of the practical to the theoretical part results from this : That the tJiink- ability of the practical principle is grounded in the thinkability of the theoretical principle. And in re- flection we only have to do with thinkability. We now begin our task. A. GENERAL SYNTHESIS OF THE OPPOSITES OF OUR PROPOSITION. The Ego posits itself as determined tJiroiigii the Non-Ego. This proposition has been deduced from our synthesis, and hence must be equally valid ; and that synthesis must be valid if the unity of consciousness is to remain, and the Ego is to be Ego. Let us now analyze it, that is, see what op- posites it involves. The Ego posits itself as deter- mined through the Non-Ego. Hence, the Ego is not to determine, but to be determined ; and the Non- Ego is to determine, that is, to limit the reality of the Ego. Our proposition involves, therefore, I06 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 1st. The Non-Ego determines (actively) the Ego, (in so far passive.) But, again, the Ego posits itself, as determined, through absolute activity. It posits itself, it posits the Non-Ego, it posits both as limitable. It posits itself as determined signifies, therefore, the same as, 2d. The Ego determines itself, (through absolute activity.) Both results evidently contradict each other ; they, therefore, cancel each other, and the proposi- tion which involves them cancels itself But that proposition can not be canceled if the unity of con- sciousness is to remain. Hence, we must seek to unite the opposites involved in it. (To unite them, not through an arbitrary invention of reflection, but simply, as we said above, by discovering the point of union of these opposites in our conscious- ness, where this point of union must be, since the opposites must be in it.) The one proposition affirms what the other de- nies. Reality and negation are, therefore, to be united, and this is done through limitation or deter- mination. The Ego determines itself, involves : The Ego is absolute totality of reality. It can determine it- self only as reality, for it is posited absolutely as reality, (§ i,) and no negation is posited in it. And yet it is to determine itself. This can not signify, therefore, the Ego cancels part of its reality, for then it would be a self-contradiction ; but it must THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. lO/ signify : The Ego determines the reality, and by means thereof determines itself It posits all real- ity as an absolute quantum, and this reality is po- sited in the Ego, and there is no other reality but it. The Ego is, therefore, determined, in so far as the reality is determined. (This absolute act of the Ego, whereby it thus determines itself, is indeed the same as already established in § 3, but in the present place it was necessary more clearly to de- fine it.) Now, the Non-Ego is opposed to the Ego ; and in it is negation, as reality is in the Ego. If, there- fore, absolute totality of reality is posited in the Ego, absolute totality of negation must be posited in the Non-Ego ; and the negation itself must be posited as absolute totality. Both totalities are to be united through determi- nation. Hence, the Ego in part determines itself, and in part is determined. But both must be thought as one and the same ; that is, in the same respect in which the Ego is determined, it must determine itself, and viee versa. The Ego is determined signifies : Reality is can- celed in the Ego. Hence, if the Ego posits in it- self only part of the absolute totality of reality, it thereby cancels the rest of that totality in itself, positing this rest, by virtue of the law of opposi- tion, (§ 2,) and of equality of itself and all quantity, in the Non-Ego, (§ 3.) In other words, whatever parts of negation the Ego posits in itself, so many parts of reality it posits in the Non-Ego ; which lOS THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. reality in the opposite for that very reason cancels the same reality in itself. The Ego, therefore, posits negation in itself, in so far as it posits reality in the Non-Ego, and vice versa ; it therefore posits itself as determining it- self in so far as it is determined, and as determined in so far as it determines itself, and our problem seems solved. We have thus undertaken a new synthesis. The conception it establishes is involved under the higher conception of determination, for it posits quantity. But if it is to be a new and other concep- tion, it must have a ground of distinction from the higher one. This its specific difference is, that, while the higher conception of determination generally establishes qnantity, without investigating the How } or In what manner .'' our present synthetical concep- tion establishes the qtiantity of tJie one through that of its opposite, and vice versa. This more deter- mined determination may, therefore, be called. Reci- procal Determination. (Kant calls it Relation}) B. PARTICULAR SYNTHESIS OF THE OPPOSITES CON- TAINED IN THE FIRST OF THE OPPOSITES OF OUR PROPOSITION, THROUGH THE CONCEPTION OF RECIPROCAL DETERMINATION. If the fundamental proposition of our theoretical part is to involve all the opposites, which are here to be united, and if, moreover, we could unite these opposites generally through the conception THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. IO9 of reciprocal determination, then the opposites again involved in these first opposites must also be already indirectly united through that conception ; or, in other words, the synthetical conception, which unites these new opposites, must already be in- volved in the higher conception of reciprocal deter- mination. Hence, we must proceed with this conception precisely as we did with the conception of determi- nation generally, that is, restrict its sphere to a smaller extent by an additional condition ; whereby we shall obtain synthetical conceptions, involved under the higher conception of reciprocal determi- nation. The first opposite discovered in our proposition was this : The Non-Ego is to determine the Ego ; that is, to cancel reality in the Ego. This it can only on the condition that it has in itself the same part of reality to be canceled in the Ego. Result : The Non-Ego has in itself reality. But all reality is posited in the Ego; and the non- Ego is opposed to the Ego, and hence has only ne- gation. All Non-Ego is negation, and it, tJierefore, has no reality at all in itself. Both results cancel each other ; but they are in- volved in the result : the Non-Ego determines the Ego. Hence, that result cancels itself But it can not cancel itself without destroying the unity of consciousness. Hence, it can not cancel itself ; and the opposites must be unitable. Our conception of reciprocal determination did no THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. not unite them ; for by it we only obtained this re- sult : If the absolute totality of reality is posited as divisible, then we can certainly take parts from the Ego, and must, under that condition, posit these parts in its opposite, the Non-Ego. But the ques- tion, How can we posit the reality of the Ego as di- visible arid abstract parts from it? or. What justifies and compels us to establish any reciprocal determi- nation ? was left unanswered. In other words. Reality is absolutely posited in the Ego. But our § 3 posited the Non-Ego as a qitan- tum, and every quantum is a something, hence also reality. Now, the Non-Ego is to be negation ; hence, as it were, a real negation, a negative quantity. According to the conception of mere relation, it is altogether the same to which of the two oppo- sites you ascribe reality and to which negation. It all depends from which of the two reflection starts. {It is thus in mathematics, a science which com- pletely abstracts from quality, and looks only to quantity.) So also here, as far as the result esta- blished by reciprocal determination is concerned. That conception says only. Whatever is negation in the Ego is reality in the Non-Ego, and vice versa ; leaving it altogether in my discretion to call the Ego reality or negation. That conception estab- lishes only a relative reality. This ambiguity must be removed, or the whole unity of consciousness is canceled ; for, if it is not removed, the Ego is real- ity and the non-Ego is also reality ; both are no longer opposites, and the Ego is not = Ego, but is = Non-Ego. THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. Ill We must, therefore, try to remove this ambi- guity ; and by removing it we shall probably be enabled to unite the contradiction discovered in the proposition : tJie Non-Ego determines the Ego. The Ego is the source of all reality. But the Ego is because it posits itself, and vice versa. Hence, to posit itself and to be is the same. But the conceptions of self-positing and of activity ge- nerally are also one and the same. All reality is, therefore, active ; and every thing active is reality. Activity is positive (in opposition to mere relative) reality. It is important to think this conception of acti- vity here pure. It is to signify nothing not con- tained in the absolute self-positing of the Ego ; nothing not immediately contained in the / a7n. Hence, not only all coiiditions of time, but also all object of activity, must here be abstracted from. In positing itself, the deed-act of the Ego is not directed upon any object at all, but simply returns into itself Only when the Ego arrives at repre- senting itself does it become object. The Ego is to be determined, that is, reality or activity is to be canceled in it. Hence, the oppo- site of activity is posited in it, namely, passivity. For passivity is positive negation, in opposition to mere relative negation. (Of course, here also all co7tditions of time must be abstracted from, as well as an activity producing this passivity. For pas- sivity is as yet the mere negation of the above pure conception of activity, and, of course, its qnantita- 112 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. five negation, since that conception of activity i3 also quantitative ; and since the mere negation of activity, without regard to quantity, would be = O or rest. Every thing in the Ego, which is not thus immediately in virtue of the / am, which is not im- mediately posited in the self-positing of the Ego, is for the 'Ego passivity, or afiection generally.) If the absolute totality of reality is to remain when the Ego is passive, then, by the law of reci- procal determination, an equal degree of activity must be transferred into the Non-Ego. And this solves the above contradiction. The Non-Ego has no reality in itself as Non-Ego, but it has reality in so far as the Ego is passive, by the law of reciprocal determination. This result, that the Non-Ego has (at least as yet) no reality for the Ego, except in so far as the Ego is affected, is very important in its consequences. The here deduced synthetical conception is in- volved in the higher one of reciprocal determina- tion, for the quantity of the one is in it determined through that of the other. But it is also specifical- ly different from it. For under the conception of reciprocal determination, it was all the same to which of the two reality or negation was ascribed ; only quantity and mere quantity was determined. Whereas here it is not the same, but decided which of the two has reality and which negation .-* The present synthesis posits, therefore, activity ; and the same degree of activity in the one as of passivity in its opposite. THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. II3 This synthesis is called the synthesis of causality. That to which activity is ascribed, and in so far not passivity, is called cause, (original reality ;) that to which passivity is ascribed, and in so far not acti- vity, is called cjfect, (dependent reality.) (Here also empirical time conditions must be altogether abstracted from. Partly because we have not yet deduced time, and have, therefore, no right to use its conception ; partly because it is un- true that the cause, as such, that is, as active in the eifect, must be thought in time in advance of the effect. Cause and effect, by virtue of their synthe- tic unity, are to be thought as one and the same. Not the cause, as such, but the substance, to which the causality is attributed, precedes the effect in time, from reasons which will appear hereafter. But in this respect the substance in which the ef- fect occurs also precedes the effect produced in it.) C. PARTICULAR SYNTHESIS OF THE OPPOSITES CON- TAINED IN THE SECOND OF THE OPPOSITES OF OUR PROPOSITION, THROUGH THE CONCEPTION OF RECIPROCAL PETERMINATION. The second opposite discovered in our funda- mental proposition was this : TJie Ego determines itself. This proposition con- tains itself two opposites, namely : 1st. The Ego detcmiincs itself ; is active. 114 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 2d. It determines itself ; is that which is deter- mined, and hence is passive. That is to say, the Ego is, in one and the same act, both active and passive ; which doubtless is a contradiction. This contradiction must be solved through the conception of reciprocal determination. It would be completely solved if its two opposites could be thus interpreted : The Ego determines its passivity through its activity, and vice versa. For in that case it would be both active and passive in one and the same act. The question is, Is that in- terpretation correct, and Jioiv can it be correct .'' The possibility of all determination (measuring) presupposes a standard of a measure. This stan- dard can only be the Ego, because only the Ego is absolutely posited. Now, in the Ego is posited reality. Hence, the Ego must be posited as absolute totality (hence, as a qna7itjini, containing all quanta, and being, there- fore, a measure for all quanta) of reality ; and it must be thus posited originally and absolutely, if our problematical synthesis is to be possible, and the contradiction satisfactorily solved. The Ego, therefore, posits absolutely — without any ground, and under no possible condition — abso- lute totality of reality as a quantum, beyond which no greater quantum is possible ; and this absolute maximum of reality it posits in itself. (Every thing posited in the Ego is reality ; and all reality which is, is posited in the Ego. (§ i.) But this THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 11$ reality is a quantum, and an absolutely posited quantum. (§ 3.) ) Through this absolutely posited standard, the quantity of a deficiency of reality is to be deter- mined. But deficiency is nothing, and the deficient is nothing, (is not determined.) Hence, it can only be thus determined, that the remaining reality be determined. The Ego can, therefore, only deter- mine the restricted quantity of its reality ; and only through this determination of a quantity of reality is it possible to determine the quantity of negation, (by means of reciprocal determination.) A determined quantum of reality is itself nega- tion, namely, negation of the totality. Every deter- mined quantum is Non-Totality. But if such a quantum is to be opposited to total- ity, and hence related to it, a ground of relation of both must be shown up ; and this ground is the conception of divisibility. (§ 3.) In the absolute totality there are no parts ; but it can be related to and opposed to parts ; and thus the above contradiction is solved. To show this more clearly, let us reflect on the conception of reality. This conception is equal to the conception of activity. All reality is posited in the Ego signifies, all activity is posited in the Ego ; all in the Ego is reality signifies, the Ego is only active ; it is Ego only in so far as it is ac- tive, and in so far as it is not active it is Non-Ego. All passivity is not - activity. Passivity can, therefore, be only determined by being related to Il6 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. activity. A ground of relation must, therefore, be shown up. This can only be the general ground of relation of reality and negation ; that is, quantity. Passivity is relatable to activity through quantity signifies : Passivity is a qiiantimi of activity. To think a quantum of activity presupposes a standard of activity, that is, activity generally ; (what we called above totality of reality.) The quantum generally is the measure. If all activity is posited in the Ego, then the po- siting of a quantum of activity is a lessening of that activity ; and such a quantum, in so far as it is not the total z.Q.i\m\.y , is passivity, although in itself \l is activity. Hence, through the positing of a quantum of ac- tivity, and through the opposition of this quantum to activity — not in so far as it is activity generally, but in so far as it is all (the total) activity — a passi- vity is posited ; that is, that quantum of activity as such is itself posited and determined -as, passivity. We have now found an X which is reality and negation, activity and passivity together. X is activity in so far as it is related to the Non- Ego, because it is posited in the Ego, in the posit- ing, active Ego. X is passivity in so far as it is related to the to- tality of activity. It is not that acting generally, but is a determined acting ; a particular manner of acting contained in the sphere of general acting. THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 11/ Illustration. Draw a circular line, = A ; and the whole plane inclosed by it, = X, is opposed to the infinite plane of infinite space which remains excluded. Now, draw within A another circular line, = B, and the plane inclosed by it, Y, is, firstly, included in A, and, together with the X of A, opposed to the in- finite space excluded by A ; hence, in so far, fully equal to X. But if you regard Y as, secondly, in- cluded in B, it is opposed to the infinite space ex- cluded by B, and hence also opposed to that part of X which is not contained in it. Y is, therefore, opposed to itself ; it is either a part of the plane X, or it is its own plane Y. Again, / tJiink is, firstly, an expression of activity ; the Ego is posited as tJiinking, and in so far as ac- tive. It is also an expression of negation, of pas- sivity ; for thinking is a particular determination of the Ego, and the conception thereof excludes all other determinations. Hence, the conception of thinking is opposed to itself ; it signifies an activity when related to the thought object, and a passi- vity when related to the Ego generally, for the Ego must be limited if thinking is to be possible. Every possible predicate of the Ego signifies a limitation thereof. The subject Ego is the abso- lutely active, or self-positing. Through the predi- cate, I think, I represent, etc., this activity is in- cluded in a determined sphere. It is now clear enourrh how the Ecro can deter- Il8 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. mine through its activity its passivity, and how it can be both active and passive together. It deter- Tnines itself, is the determining, the active, in so far as through absolute spontaneity it posits itself in one of all the spheres contained in the totality of its reality ; and in so far as we reflect merely on this its absolute positing itself into the sphere, and not on the limit of the sphere. It is determined, passive, in so far as we look upon it merely as posited in this limited sphere, abstract- ing from the spontaneity of the positing. We have found the original synthetical act of the Ego, where- by our contradiction has been solved ; and through it we have discovered a new synthetical conception which we have still to examine a little closer. Like the above conception of causality, it is a closer determined reciprocal determination ; and we shall obtain in both conceptions the completest insight by comparing them with each other. According to the rules of general determination, both conceptions, that of causality and our new one, must be, ist. Equal to reciprocal determina- tion ; 2d, Opposed to it ; 3d, Equal to each other ; and, 4th, Opposed to each other. They are equal to reciprocal determination in this, that in them, as in it, activity is determined through passivity, or reality through negation, and vice versa. Opposed to it in this, that, whereas by the con- ception of reciprocal determination a reciprocity is only posited, but not determined, these two concep- THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 1 19 tions determine the order of the reciprocity, and fix the rule by which to go from reahty to negation, or vice versa. Equal to each other, because in both conceptions the order is fixed. Opposed to each other in regard to the order of the reciprocity. In the conception of causality, ac- tivity is determined through passivity ; in our pre- sent conception, passivity is determined through activity. In so far as the Ego is regarded as embracing the whole absolutely determined sphere of all real- ities, it is substance. In so far as the Ego is posited in a not absolutely determined sphere, (how such a sphere may, nevertheless, be determined, we shall not investigate at present,) in so far the Ego is ac- cidental ; or, there is an accidence in the Ego. The limit, which separates acts of this particular sphere from the whole sphere, is that which makes the ac- cidence accidence, or is the ground of distinction, between substance and accidence. This limit is in the whole sphere. Hence, the accidence is /// and belonging to the substance ; it excludes something from the whole sphere. Hence, the accidence is not substance. No substance is thinkable without relation to an accidence ; for only through the positing of possible spheres within the absolute sphere does the Ego become substance ; only through possible accidences do realities arise ; for otherwise the reality would be simply one. The realities of the Ego are its I20 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. modes of acting ; the Ego is substance, therefore, in so far as all its possible modes of acting (all its possible modes of being) are posited in it. No accidence is thinkable without substance ; for, to know something as a determined reality, it must be related to reality in general. The substance is all 7xciprocity, (interchange,) thought in general ; the accidence, a determined in- terchanging zvith another. Originally there is only one substance, the Ego. In it are posited all possible accidences, hence all possible realities. How several accidences, having some particular characteristic in common, may be comprehended together, and be themselves thought as substances, the accidences whereof are again mutually determined through the difference of those characteristics — this we shall see hereafter. The conception here established is called the conception of Substantiality. In the development of this conception we have left altogether unnoticed, ist. That activity of the Ego whereby it distinguishes and relates itself as substance and accidence ; and secondly. That which induces the Ego to undertake this act. (The lat- ter, we may suppose from our first synthesis, will show itself to be induced by the Non-Ego.) Hence, as in every synthesis, every thing is properly unit- ed and connected in the centre ; but the two end- points are left unconnected. This remark shows us again, from a new side, the method of our science. We must always continue THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 121 to connect the opposites by central links ; but this does not completely solve the contradiction, and only removes it further from us. True, by a new central link we remove the contradiction last shown up ; but, in order to remove it, we have been forced to assume new end-points, which are again oppo- sites, and must again be united. The true and highest problem to be solved is this : How can the Ego and the Non-Ego imme- diately determine each other, since they are both complete opposites .'' We place some X between them, upon which both may direct their causality, and thus, at least indirectly, influence each other. But we soon dis- cover that in this X there must also be a jDoint somewhere in which the Ego and Non-Ego imme- diately connect. To prevent this, we interpose a new link = Y. But we soon discover that in Y also there must be a point wherein the opposites immediately connect. And in this way we should continue infinitely, if reason did not interpose its absolute assertion — which the philosopher does not create, but simply show up. There sJiall be no Non-Ego ! The Ego shall be absolutely self-de- termined ! Whereby the knot is not untied, but cut to pieces. Or, in so far as the Ego is limited by the Non- Ego, it is finite ; but in itself, as posited through its own absolute activity, it is infinite. These two, infinity and finity, are to be united in the Ego. But such a uniting is in itself impossible. For a 122 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. long time we allay the conflict through mediation ; the infinite limits the finite. But finally, when the complete impossibility of the uniting is seen, finity must be altogether canceled ; all limits must vanish, and the infinite Ego must remain alone as the one and as all. Example. Posit in space = A, in the point m, light ; and in the point n, darkness. Now, since space is continuous, and since there is no hiatus between m and n, there must be between both points some- where a point o, which point is both light and darkness. But this is a contradiction. Hence, you place between both a connecting link, dimness. Let this extend fi-om p to q, and dimness will be limited by light in p, and by darkness in q. But thereby you have not solved the contradiction ; for dimness is mixture of light and darkness. Now, light and darkness can limit each other in p only, if p is both light and dimness together ; and since dimness is distinguished from light only in this, that it is also darkness, p must be both light and darkness together. So likewise in the point q. The contradiction can, therefore, be only solved thus : Light and darkness are not at all opposites, but are merely to be distinguished in degrees. Darkness is only a very small quantity of light. It is precisely thus with the Ego and the Non- Ego. THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 1 23 D. SYNTHESIS OF THE OPPOSITION BETWEEN THE TWO DISCOVERED MODES OF RECIPROCAL DETERMINA- TION, CAUSALITY AND SUBSTANTIALITY. The Ego posits itself as determined throiigh the Noti-Ego ; this was the chief synthesis from which we started, and which could not be canceled with- out canceling the unity of consciousness. It in- volved, however, contradictions ; and these we had to solve. First arose the question : How can the Ego both determine 2xv^ be determined? By means of the conception of reciprocal determination we were enabled to say, to determine and to be deter- mined is one and the same ; by positing a quantum of negation in itself, the Ego posits the same quan- tum of reality in the Non-Ego, and viee versa. But the question remained : In which is reality to be posited, in the Ego or in the Non-Ego .'* By means of the conception of causality we were enabled to say, negation or passivity must be posit- ed in the Ego ; and hence the same quantum of reality or activity is posited in the Non-Ego. Then the question arose : But how can passivity be posit- ed in the Ego ? Finally, by means of the conception of substan- tiality we were enabled to say, passivity and activity in the Ego is one and the same ; for passivity is only a smaller quantum of activity. But these answers have inclosed us in a circle. K 124 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. If the Ego posits a smaller degree of activity in itself, then, of course, it posits passivity in itself, and activity in the Non-Ego. But the Ego can not have the power to absolutely posit a lower degree of activity in itself, since, according to the concep- tion of substantiality, it posits all activity and noth- ing but activity in itself Hence, the positing of a lower degree of activity must be preceded by an activity of the Non-Ego, which must have first really canceled a part of the activity of the Ego. But this is equally impossible, since, according to the conception of causality, activity can be ascribed to the Non-Ego only in so far as a passivity is po- sited in the Ego. In other words, under the conception of causality alone, it is well conceivable how an outside observer could ascribe activity to the Non-Ego ; but not how the Ego itself could ascribe the cause of its passivity to the activity of the Non-Ego. The Ego might be determined, but could never posit itself as determined ; for the passivity in the Ego would b(? merely posited in the Ego, but not posited in the "Ego for itself On the other hand, under the conception of sub- stantiality, even supposing the Ego to have the power of absolutely limiting itself independently of any Non-Ego, and, moreover, the power of be- coming conscious of this limitation ; what warrant would the Ego have to refer its limitation to a Non- Ego .-' To assume a Non-Ego as cause of the limi- tation ? None at all ; on the contrary, it would re- THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 12$ gard itself as the cause thereof. Hence, the Ego would be determined, but not determined through the Non-Ego. Both conceptions in their separateness, therefore, do not explain what is to be explained, and the con- tradiction remains : If the Ego posits itself as de- termined, it is not determined through the Non- Ego ; and if it is determined through the Non-Ego, it does not posit itself as determined. Let us now establish this contradiction more definitely : The Ego can not posit itself as passive without positing activity in the Non-Ego ; but it can not posit activity in the Non-Ego without positing pas- sivity in itself. Hence, it can do neither alone. Result : 1, The Ego does not posit passivity in itself, in so far as it posits activity in the Non-Ego, and vice versa ; it, therefore, does not posit at all. (Not the condition is denied, but the conditioned ; not the rule of reciprocal determination generally, but its application to the present instance.) 2. But the Ego is to posit passivity in itself, and in so far activity in the Non-Ego, and vice versa. The one proposition denies what the second one affirms ; they are, therefore, related like negation and reality. These are united through quantity. Both propositions must be valid, hence they must be valid each only in part. Hence : The Ego ^o^aX-S, partly passivity in itself, in so far a? it posits activity in the Non-Ego ; but it posits 126 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. partly not passivity in itself, in so far as it posits activity in the Ego, and vice versa. The Ego posits partly passivity and partly not passivity in the Non-Ego, in so far as it posits ac- tivity in the Ego. That is to say, an activity is posited in the Ego, to which no passivity in the Non-Ego corresponds ; and an activity in the Non-Ego, to which no passi- vity in the Ego corresponds. Let us call this sort of activity i?idependent activity. But such an inde- pendent activity in the Ego and Non-Ego contra- dicts the law of oppositing, which has now been closer determined by the law of reciprocal determi- nation ; hence it contradicts chiefly the conception of reciprocal determination, which rules in our pre- sent investigation. For that conception says : All activity in the Ego determines a passivity of the Non-Ego, and vice versa ; and our new result estab- lishes an independent activity in the Ego, which does not determine a passivity in the Non-Ego, and vice versa. But both results must be valid. Hence, they must be united in quantity. Both must be vaKd only in part. The conception of reciprocal deter- mination is to be valid only in part, that is, is itself to be determined, to have its validity confined by a certain rule to a particular extent. Or the inde- pendent activity of our result is to be independent only to a certain extent. In the Ego is to be an activity determining and determined by a passivity in the Non-Ego ; and in THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 1 27 the Non-Ego is also to be an activity determining and determined by a passivity of the Ego. To this activity and passivity the conception of reciprocal determination is applicable. At the same time, there is to be in the Ego and in the Non-Ego an independent activity, not deter- mining a passivity in the other. Both propositions are to be valid. It must be possible, therefore, to think them as united through a synthetical conception in one and the same act. Such a conception would be about as follows : The reciprocal activity and passivity determines the independent activity, and the independent activity determines the reciprocal activity and passivity. If this be true, then, 1. The independent activities of the Ego and Non-Ego do not reciprocally determine each other directly, but only indirectly, through their recipro- cally determined activity and passivity. 2. And the law of reciprocal determination is valid only in so far as related to the reciprocal acti- vity and passivity and independent activity ; but is not valid as related to independent activity alone. This result involves the following three proposi- tions : 1. An independent activity is determined through reciprocal activity and passivity. 2. An independent activity determines the reci- procal activity and passivity. 3. Both are mutually determined through each other ; and it is all the same whether we proceed 128 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. from reciprocal activity and passivity to indepen- dent activity, or vice versa. An independent activity is determined tJiroiLgh re- ciprocal activity and passivity. Concerning this proposition, we have first to in- quire its significance, and next to apply it to the conceptions of causality and substantiality in their contradiction. Its significance. We have said before, that our present undertaking involves a restriction of the conception of reciprocal determination. This is done by showing the ground of the application of that conception. According to that conception, by positing acti- vity in the one, (the Ego or Non-Ego,) passivity is immediately posited in its opposite, and vice versa. It is also clear from the rule of opposition, that, if a passivity is to be posited, it must be posited in the opposite of the active. But why is passivity to be posited at all, that is, why is a reciprocal deter- mination to occur at all .'* Activity and passivity, as such, are opposed ; and yet passivity is immediately posited through acti- vity, and vice versa. Hence, they must be equal to each other in a third conception, = X, which makes- possible the transition from the one to the other, without destroying the unity of consciousness. This third is the ground of relation between activity and passivity in the reciprocity, (§ 3.) THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 1 29 This ground of relation is not dependent upon reciprocal determination, but the latter is depen- dent upon it, becomes possible only through that ground of relation. True, in reflection, this ground is posited through reciprocal determination, but also posited as independent of it and its reciprocity. This ground is, moreover, determined in reflection through the reciprocity ; that is, if the reciprocal de- termination is posited, the ground of relation of its activity and passivity is posited in that sphere, which contains within it the sphere of reciprocal determination. In other words, through this ground of relation a higher sphere is posited round about the sphere of reciprocal determination. The ground of relation fills up the sphere of determination in general, while reciprocal determination fills up only a part of that sphere. This ground is a reality ; or, if reciprocal deter- mination is thought as an act, is an activity. And thus an independent activity is determined through reciprocal activity and passivity. APPLICATION UNDER CONCEPTION OF CAUSALITY. By means of this conception, which gave us the first instance of an activity and passivity mutually determining each other, an activity of the Non-Ego is posited through a passivity of the Ego. This first instance of a reciprocal determination (of a re- ciprocity, as we shall usually call it) is now to de- termine and posit an independent activity. 130 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. The reciprocal determination in this instance starts from passivity. Passivity is posited, and through and by means of passivity activity is posit- ed. The passivity is posited in the Ego. Hence, if an activity is posited in opposition to the passi- vity, the activity must be posited in the Non-Ego, the opposite, according to the conception of reci- procal determination. Of course, in this transition from the Ego to the Non-Ego, there is also a ground of relation which we know already as quantity. (The absolute totality of reality or activity is always the same. If only part of it is posited in the Ego, or if passivity is posited in the Ego, the correspond- ing part of reality or activity is posited in the Non- Ego.) This ground of relation can be properly called here the ideal ground ; and, hence, the passi- vity of the Ego is the ideal ground of the activity of the Non-Ego. (Namely, since the whole activity is not posited in the Ego, the part not posited in the Ego is posited in the Non-Ego.) But wliy is an activity to be posited at all as op- posite of the passivity in the Ego, from which the conception of reciprocal determination starts. If it is posited, it must, certainly, as we have shown, be posited in the Non-Ego ; but why is it to be posited at all, why is the conception of reciprocal determi- nation to be applied here at all .-* In the Ego is posited a passivity ; that is, a quan- tum of its activity is canceled. This passivity^ or this diminntion of its activity, must have a ground ; for the canceled activity is a quantum, and every THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 131 quantum is determined through another quantum, by means of which it is neither a smaller nor a larger quantum, but precisely this quantum, accord- ing to the law of determination in general, (§ 3.) In the Ego the ground of this diminution can not be, for the Ego only posits activity in itself, and not passivity ; it posits itself as being, not as not-being. Hence, the ground, by virtue of the law of opposi- tion, (§ 2,) must be posited in the Non-Ego ; or the Non-Ego contains the ground of this diminution. Here we speak no longer of mere quantity, but of quality. Passivity is opposed to the Ego here in so far as the Ego is only activity, and hence the ground of it can not be posited in the Ego, but must be posited in the Non-Ego. Now, the ground of a quality is called 7^cal ground. An activity of the Non-Ego, independent of the reciprocal deter- mination of the two opposites of activity and pas- sivity, nay, presupposed for the very possibility of that reciprocity, is thus the real ground of the pas- sivity of the Ego ; and this independent activity is posited, so that we may have a real ground of that passivity. Hence, through the above reciprocity is posited an independent activity, (of the Non-Ego.; We have now seen how, through the reciprocity between passivity of the Ego and activity of the Non-Ego, an independent activity of the Non-Ego is posited and determined. It is posited in order to get a ground for a passivity posited in the Ego ; and hence extends no further than this passivity. There is, hence, no original reality and activity of 132 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. the Non-Ego for the Ego, except in so far as the Ego is passive. No passivity in the Ego, 710 acti- vity in the Non-Ego. This result is vahd even when this activity is spoken of as an activity, indepen- dent of the conception of causality. Even the thing in itself is only in so far as the conception of causality extends, and has validity only in so far as, at least, the possibility of passivity is presupposed in the Ego. (A result which will receive its com- plete determination and applicability only in the. practical part of our science.) Let it, therefore, be well remembered, that the conclusion as to the Non-Ego being real ground is. valid only in so far as it is true that the passivity in the Ego is qualitative ; which it is only in the conception of causality. As soon as we get to the second reciprocal con- ception, substantiality, we shall see that under that conception the passivity of the Ego can not be thought at all as qualitative, but only as quantita- tive, as diminished activity ; and that under that conception, therefore, the Non-Ego again becomes merely ideal ground. A philosophy which starts from positing the Non- Ego as cause of all representation, and the repre- sentation as its effect, and which thus posits the Non-Ego as the real ground of all, the Non-Ego being simply because it is and what it is, (Spino- za's Fate,) and the Ego being simply an accidence of the Non-Ego, and not substance at all ; such a system is a dogmatic Realism, (or material Spinoz- THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 1 33 ism,) a system which presupposes the impossibi- lity of making the highest abstraction, namely,, abstraction from the Non-Ego ; and which is ut- terly ungrounded, as it does not establish any final ground. On the other hand, a system which makes the Ego the substance of representation, and represen- tation the accidence of the Ego, the Non-Ego be- ing not real ground thereof at all, but merely ideal ground, and having, therefore, no reality beyond re- presentation — such a system is a dogmatic Ideal- ism. In such a system no ground can be assigned for the limitation of reality in the Ego, (for the affection through which a representation arises.) Such a system has certainly undertaken the highest abstraction, and is therefore completely grounded. But it is incomplete, because it does not explain what is to be explained. The true question in dispute between dogmatic Realism and dogmatic Idealism is, therefore, in which manner shall we explain Representation ? Through the conception of Causality ! asserts Real- ism. Through the conception of Substantiality ! asserts Idealism. In the theoretical part of our science this ques- tion will remain undecided ; or, rather, it will be answered thus : Both modes of explanation are cor- rect. Under certain conditions you must take the one, and under certain conditions the other. (A system which shows up this is a Critical Idealism^ such as Kant has established in completest form.) X34 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. But this answer involves human — that is, all finite — reason in self-contradiction ; and this con- tradiction must be solved. It is solved in the prac- tical part of our science. The absolute being of the Ego can not be relin- quished without annihilating the Ego itself, and hence the question is finally decided in favor of the Ego, precisely as dogmatic Idealism decides it Our Idealism, however, not being dogmatic, does not assert this to be so, but shows, that it shall be so. In other words, our system explains the problem by positing the Ego (which is in so far practical) as an Ego which shall contain in itself the ground of the existence of the Non-Ego, through which the ac- tivity of the Ego as intelligence is diminished. This heing an (in time) infinite idea, our explanation, in- stead of explaining, rather shows that and why what is to be explained can not be explained. (Or, that to ask for an explanation is a self-contradiction.) APPLICATION UNDER CONCEPTION OF SUBSTAN- TIALITY. By means of the conception of substantiality, through activity in the Ego a passivity in the Ego is posited and determined. The reciprocal deter- mination of this activity and passivity in the Ego was the second instance of reciprocal determination which we discovered ; and this reciprocity is also to determine an independent activity. In themselves, passivity and activity are oppo- THE SCIENCE OF KNOWELDGE. 1 35 sites ; and we have seen how it is possible that, tlirough one and the same act which posits a cer- tain quantity of activity in the one, the same quan- tity of passivity can be posited in its opposite. But it is an evident contradiction that activity and pas- sivity should both together be posited, not in two opposites, but in one and the same, (in the Ego.) True, this contradiction has been partly solved in the general deduction of substantiality, by show- ing that passivity is in its quality nothing but di- minished activity, and is in its quantity only not the totality of activity ; and that it, therefore, can be related to the totality of activity, and can thus be jDOsited as diminished activity. The ground of re- lation between both being thus activity. But if the Ego posits within itself diminished activity, and if the Non-Ego is also to have dimi- nished activity, how are both these diminished acti- vities to be distinguished 1 that is, how are the Ego and Non-Ego to be distinguished .'' For the ground of distinction between the Ego and the Non-Ego has been destroyed. Unless this distinction is possible, the required reciprocal determination is also not possible, and indeed none of our deduced determinations are pos- sible. All our deductions would be canceled. Hence, the diminished activity of the Ego must have a character altogether peculiar to itself, whereby it may be characterized as the activity of the Ego, and can never be taken for activity of the Non-Ego. This character is absolute positing, (§ i.) But ab- 136 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. solute signifies unlimited, and yet that activity of the Ego is to be diminished, limited. The dimi- nished activity is, therefore, to be both absolute and limited. That is, in so far as it is an acting in general, it is absolute, unconditioned ; you may act or not. But in so far as it is directed upon an object, it is limited ; when you act, the act must be directed upon this object, and can not be directed upon any other. We see, therefore, how this reciprocal determina- tion posits an independent activity. For the acti- vity in that reciprocity is itself independent, not however, in so far as it stands in that reciprocity, but in so far as it is activity. In so far as it enters the reciprocity, it is limited, and in so far passivity. We see, also, how the reciprocity determines this independent activity, that is, in the mere reflection. For the activity was assumed as absolute only in so far as to make possible the reciprocity. Hence, this activity is posited as absolute only in so far as reciprocal activity and passivity are to be determijiea by it ; and itself is, therefore, determined by the ex- tent of this reciprocity. (It is not an absohUe acti- vity in general}) An absolute activity of this cha- racter is called Power of Imagination, as we shall see in time. THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 1 37 11. AN INDEPENDENT ACTIVITY DETERMINES A RECI- PROCAL ACTIVITY AND PASSIVITY. Let US first obtain the significance of this propo- sition, and its distinction from the former. The former had reference merely to the content of the reciprocity, not to its form. It simply said, if a reciprocity is to be, then there must be links which stand in reciprocal relation and can be interchanged. Thus the question arose : How are these links pos- sible ? And then we were led to show up an inde- pendent activity as ground of these links. But now we have to start from that which con- stitutes the reciprocal determination as reciprocity, as an interchange, as a going from one oi^posite to another. Here, therefore, we do not seek the ground of the cofitciit of the reciprocity, but the ground of its form. This formal ground of the re- ciprocity is also to be an independent activity ; and it is this we now have to prove. Illustration. The magnet attracts iron ; iron is attracted by the magnet. These are two exchangeable proposi- tions ; that is, through the one the other is posited. This is a presupposed fact, presupposed as ground- ed ; and hence, if you look to the content of this re- ciprocal relation, you do not ask. Who posits the one proposition through the other, .and how does this T38 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. positing occur ? You assume the reciprocity as hav- ing occitrred if you look to the cojitent of the reci- procity ; and you only ask, Why are these two pro- positions contained among the sphere of proposi- tions, which can be thus posited the one through the other ? There must be something in both which makes it possible to interchange them. Hence, you look up this, their material content, which makes them interchangeable. If, however, you look to the form of the recipro- city, if you reflect on the occurring of the inter- change, and hence abstract from the propositions which are interchanged, then the question no long- er is : With what right are these propositions inter- changed ^ but simply : How is interchange effected at all .-* And then it is discovered, that there must be an intelligent being outside of the iron and mag- net, which, observing both and uniting both in its consciousness, is compelled to give to the one the opposite predicate of the other ; (to the one the predicate of attracting, to the other the predicate of being attracted.) The first mode gives simply a reflection upon a , phenomenon ; the second mode a reflection upon that reflection ; the reflection of the philosopher upon the mode of observation, APPLICATION UNDER THE CONCEPTION OF CAUSALITY, In the reciprocity of causality, passivity in the Ego posits activity in the Non-Ego. The mere formal expressiop of this reciprocity is a positing THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 139 through a not-positing, that is, a transferring. Such is thQfoimal character of the reciprocity here ; ancl^ hence, such is the material character of the activity which estabhshes that reciprocity. This activity is independent of the reciprocity, since the latter only is possible by means of it ; and is independent also of the two links of the reciprocity as suck ; for only through it do they become reciprocally inter- changeable, since it is the activity which inter- changes them. But all positing belongs to the Ego ; hence this activity of transferring, to make possible a determination through the conception of causality, belongs to the Ego. The Ego carries over, transfers, activity from itself into the Non- Ego ; and thus posits through activity passivity in itself. In so far as the Ego is active in carrying over this activity, in so far the Non-Ego is passive \. activity is transferred into it. (Of course, this contradicts our former conclu- sion establishing an independent activity of the Non-Ego ; but we must wait and see how both will be reunited.) It must also be remembered that this activity is independent of the reciprocity which first becomes possible through it. There might be another reciprocity which does not become possible through it. Our result, therefore, is this : Even in so far as the Ego is passive, it must also be active, tho2igh perhaps not merely active ; and this result may be important enough. M^ THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. APPLICATION UNDER THE CONCEPTION OF SUB- STANTIALITY. In the reciprocity of substantiality, activity is to \)Q. posited as limited by means of absolute totality ; that is to say, that part of the absolute totality •which is excluded by the limit is posited as not posited through the positing of the hmited activity. Hence, the mere formal character of this recipro- city is a not-positing by means of a positing. That 'vvhich is wanting in the limited activity is posited in the absolute totality ; is not posited in the limited .activity ; it is posited as not posited in the recipro- city, (in the reciprocal determination of activity apd passivity.) By this conception of substantiality we start, therefore, from an absolute positing, from a positing of the absolute totality. Hence, the material character of that act, which itself posits this reciprocity, must also be a not- positing through a positing, and through an absolute positing. We abstract utterly from the question Avhence the not-positedness in the limited activity may come, and what may be its ground. The limit- ■ed act is presupposed as existing, and the only ques- tion is : How may it interchange with unlimitedness .'' All positing in general, and particularly absolute positing, belongs to the Ego ; the act which posits the present reciprocity starts from absolute posit- ing, and therefore belongs to the Ego. It is inde- pendent of the reciprocity, for that becomes possible -only through it. This not positing through a posit- THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. I4I ing we may call an externalizing. A certain quan- tum of the absolute totality is excluded, externalized, from the posited diminished activity, is posited as not contained in it, but as outside of it. The cha- racteristic distinction between the externalizing and the previous transferring is this : in transferring something is certainly also excluded from the Ego ; but this we do not reflect upon, looking merely to its being posited again in the opposite, the Non- Ego. It is a transferring to another. But in ex- ternalizing we merely exclude from the Ego, and do not say whether the excluded be posited in an- other, and if so in what. To this activity of externalizing passivity must be opposed ; and it really is thus. For a part of the absolute totality is externalized, is posited, as not posited. The activity has an object ; a part of the totality is this object. To what substrate of reality this passivity may be assigned, whether to the Ego or to the Non-Ego, is not the question 'here ; and it is very important that no other conclu- sions should be drawn from our result than are ■contained in it, and that the form of the reciprocity be comprehended in all its purity. (Each thing is what it is ; it has those realities which are posited when it is posited, (A = A.) To call something an accidence of a thing is to say that something is not included in the positing of the thing, does not belong to its real nature, and is to be excluded from its original conception. It is this determination of the accidence which we have now 142 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. explained. Nevertheless, in another sense the acci- dence is also ascribed to the thing and posited in it How this is done we shall see hereafter.) III. BOTH THE RECIPROCITY AND THE ACTIVITY, INDE PENDENT THEREOF, MUTUALLY DETERMINE EACH OTHER. Let US again, as heretofore, first try to get at the significance of this proposition, and then proceed to apply it. As we have now, however, acquired a twofold reciprocity, 3. form and a content of it, and also a twofold independent activity, which, on the one hand, determines the form, and, on the other hand, is (in reflection) determined by the content of the reciprocity ; we must make more clear the above proposition by uniting these several links through the synthesis of reciprocal determination. Hence, that proposition involves the following three : {a}j The activity, independent of the form of the reciprocity, determines the activity, independent of its content, and vice versa ; that is, both are syn- thetically united and mutually determine each other. (^.) The form of the reciprocity determines its content, and vice versa ; that is, both are syntheti- cally united and mutually determine each other. (r.) The reciprocity (as synthetical unity) deter- mines the independent activity, (as synthetical uni- ty,) and vice versa; that is, both determine each other mutually and are synthetically united. THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 143 (a.) TJie activity independent of the form, and the activity independent of the content of the reciprocity ^ are imitually to determine each otJier. That activity which is to determine the form of the reciprocity, or the reciprocity as such, but is ta be absolutely independent of it, is a going over from •one of the links of the reciprocity to the other. That activity which determines the content of the reciprocity is an activity which posits that into the links v/hereby it is made possible to go from the one to the other. The latter activity gives the X which is in both links, and can be contained only in both, but not in one of them merely ; and which makes it impossible to remain content with the positing of the one link, but forces us to posit at the same time the other link, because it shows up the incompleteness of the one without the other. This X is that to which the unity of consciousness clings, and must cling if no hiatus is to arise in it ; it is, as it were, the con- ductor of consciousness. The former activity is consciousness itself, in so far as it floats over the interchanging links while clinging to X, and in so far as it is a unit; although it changes its objects, these links, and necessarily, must change them if it is to be a unit. The former determines the latter signifies, the .going from the one link to the other is the ground of the content of the reciprocity ; the latter deter- mines the former signifies, the content of the reci- procal links is the ground of the going from the »one to the other as act. Both mutually determine T44 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE each other signifies, therefore : by positing the mere- going over, you posit in each hnk that which makes this going over possible, and by positing them as reciprocal links you immediately go from the one to the other. The going from one link to the other becomes possible only by doing it ; and it is only possible in so far as it is actually done. It is an absolute act without any other ground. The ground of the going over from one link to the other lies in consciousness itself, not outside of it. Conscious- ness, because it is consciousness, must go from one- link to the other, and would not be consciousness if it did not, because a hiatus would arise in it. {b) The form of the reciprocity and its content are- tnntually to determijie each otJier. The reciprocity, as we have said before, is distin- guished from the activity presupposed tJirongJi it, by abstracting from this presupposed activity, (for instance, by abstracting from the activity of an in- telligence which observes the reciprocity.) In this view, the intercJianging links of the reciprocity are thought as interchanging tJirongh themselves ; we transfer into the things what in truth is only in us. How far such an abstraction may be valid will ap- pear in time. From such a stand-point, therefore, the links in- terchange through themselves. And their mutual joining is the foj'm, while the activity and passi- vity, occurring in this joining, (namely, each joins, and is joined,) is the content of the reciprocity. We shall call this content here the mutual Relation- of the interchansins: links. THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDJE. 1 45 Now, that joining is to determine the relation of the hnks ; that is, immediately and through the mere joining of the links, 2^^ joining, is the relation to be determined, and vice versa. Their joining and their relation is to be one and the same. In other words : The relation of the links consists in this, that they interchange, and they have no other mutual relation. If they are not posited as interchanging, they are not posited at all. Again : through this mere form of a reciprocity being posited between them, the content of the re- ciprocity is immediately and completely determined. The links interchange necessarily and only in one possible manner, which is absolutely determined by the very fact that they interchange. If tJiey are posited, a determined interchange or reciprocity of them is posited ; and if a determined reciprocity of them is posited, then they are posited. The links and a determined reciprocity are one and the same. (r.) The independent activity as synthetical unity determines the reciprocity as synthetical unity, and vice versa ; that is, both of these syntJietical unities Diutnally determine each other, and are themselves synthetically united. The activity and synthetical unity has been dis- covered as an absolute going from one link to an- other, the latter as an in itself absolutely determined joining. The former determines the latter signifies, by the going from one link to the other their join- ing is posited. The latter determines the former signifies, as the links join, the activity must neces- 146 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. sarily go from the one to the other. Both deter- mine each other mutually signifies, the positing of the one posits the other, from each you can and must proceed to the other. It is all one and the same, and the whole is absolutely posited ; rests on itself. To make this important result clearer, we apply it to the propositions involved in it. The activity which determines the form of the reciprocity determines all that occurs in the reci- procity, and vice versa. Determines the form : that is, the mere reciprocity in its form, or the joining of the links, is not possible without the act of go- ing from the one to the other, and only through the going from the one link to the other is their joining posited ; and vice versa. No joining of the links, no going from the one to the other ; no going from the one to the other, no joining. Both is one and the same, and is distinguishable only in reflection. Determines also the content : that is, through the necessary going from one of the links to the other these reciprocal links are first posited as such, and indeed since they are only posited as such, posited at all, and vice versa ; through the positing of these links as interchanging links is the activity first posited which goes from the one to the other. Hence, you may start from which of the moments you will, the positing of the one always involves the positing of the other three.* * Four moments and their unity, that is to say, five in all. This fivefold FiCHTE has shown up in other works with particular ear- nestness, as occurring in every synthesis of consciousness. — Trans- lator's Note. THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 147 The activity which determines the content of the reciprocity determines the whole reciprocity : that is, it posits that by means of which the going over is made possible, and hence necessary. It therefore posits the activity of the form, and through it all the rest. Hence, the activity returns into itself by means of the reciprocity, and the reciprocity returns into itself by means of the activity. Every thing re- produces itself, and no hiatus is possible ; from each link you are driven to all the others. The activity of the form determines that of the content ; the .activity of the content determines the content of the reciprocity ; the content of the reciprocity de- termines its form ; the form of the reciprocity the ■activity of the form, etc. They are all one and the same synthetical condition. The act returns into itself through its circular movement. But the whole circular movement is absolutely posited. It is because it is, and there is no higher ground for it. And now, having shown the full significance of ■our proposition, let us proceed to apply it as here- tofore. APPLICATION UNDER THE CONCEPTION OF CAUSALITY. Our proposition was : The reciprocity and the ac- tivity independent of it are mutually to determine .each other. 148 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. According to the just established scheme this- involves the following : 1st. The activity of the form determines that of the content, and vice versa. 2d, The form of the reciprocity determines its- content, and vice versa. 3d. The synthetically united activity determines the synthetically united reciprocity, and vice versa^ I. — The activity of the form determines that of the content, and vice versa. As mere form, this activity was characterized as a transferring, that is, a positing through a not- positing. This activity of the form is to determine the activity of the content of the reciprocity, which latter was found to be an independent activity in the Non-Ego, which made possible a passivity in the Ego. This latter is determined by the former., means : The activity is posited in the Non-Ego through the Ego, but only in so far as something is not posited. The activity of the Non-Ego is thus inclosed in a limited sphere, that is, in the activity of tJie form. The Non-Ego is active only in so far as it is posited active through the Ego, in virtue of a not-positing. No positing by a not-positing — no activity of the Non-Ego. But, on the other hand, the activity of the content, or the independent ac- tivity of the Non-Ego, is to determine that of the form, that is, the transferring or the positing through a not-positing. This means, therefore : the activity of the Non- Ego is to determine the transferring as a transfer- THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 1 49 ring ; or, it is to posit the X, whereby the incom- pleteness of the one link is shown up, and thus the necessity of positing it, as interchanging link^ or as a link in reciprocity with another link. This second link is a passivity, as passivity. Hence, the Non-Ego is the ground of a ;^^/-positing, and thus determines and conditions the activity of the form. No activity of the Non-Ego, no positing through a not-positing. Here we have again the conflict of Realism, which says that activity can not be transferred unless an independent reality of the Non-Ego is presup- posed ; and of Idealism, which says, that all reality of the Non-Ego is simply transferred to it by the Ego. This conflict is to be reconciled. This is done in the following synthesis : Activity in the Non-Ego is passivity in the Ego, and both are altogether one and the same. Neither is the ground of the other ; both are one and the same act. In so far as the Ego does not posit in itself, it posits in the Non-Ego, that is, in so far it is itself Non-Ego. Let us explain this : When the Non-Ego is con- sidered as limiting the Ego, it is not considered at all Si's, positing, but merely as canceling ; hence, it is opjDOsed to the Ego as qualitatively distinct, is real gronnd of a determination in the Ego. But when the Ego is viewed as limiting itself, it is still viewed as positing ; that is, as positing a negative ; hence, as in part positing, and in part not-positing. The Ego is, therefore, only quantitatively opposed to it- ISO THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. self — is only the ideal ground of a determination in itself ; and since it posits that which it does not posit in itself, in the Non-Ego, it is the ideal ground of the reality of the Non-Ego, to which that deter- mination corresponds. But that the ideal ground should thus become a real ground in the Non-Ego, this is what common sense can not comprehend. Ideal ground and real ground are, therefore, one and the same. The reason why common sense refuses to comprehend it is because it considers the Ego as an external thing. Just as in exter- nal things we distinguish the real ground of their mutual relation, that is, the independent content or quality which makes them related ; and the ideal ground of their relation ; that is, that we posit them as related ; so common consciousness posits its Ego as an external thing, related to other things by an inherent something ; for instance, as the magnet is related to iron. But in the Ego positing itself is the same as being. In it real and ideal ground are one and the same. Again, not positing itself, and not being, is for the Ego the same. The Ego does not posit something as itself means, the Ego is not that something. The Non- Ego is to influence the Ego means, it is to cancel a positing in the Ego ; it is to cause the Ego not to posit. Again, the Ego is to recognize a Non-Ego means, it is to posit reality in the Non-Ego ; for the Ego recognizes no other reality but what itself posits. Activity of the Ego and of the Non-Ego are one 7^HE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 15I and the same means : the Ego can only posit some- thing not in itself, by positing it in the Non-Ego ; and can only posit in itself by not positing in the Non-Ego, The Ego must posit, however, as sure as it is an Ego ; but it need not posit in itself. Passivity of the Ego and of the Non-Ego is also one and the same. The Ego does not posit some- thing in itself means, that something is posited in the Non-Ego. Activity and passivity of the Ego are one and the same. For what the Ego does not posit in itself it posits in the Non-Ego. Activity and passivity of the Non-Ego are one and the same. In so far as the Non-Ego is to in- fluence the Ego, to cancel something in the Ego, this something has been posited in the Non-Ego by the Ego. Thus the synthetical solution is complete. None of the moments are grounds of the others ; all are one and the same. The question, What is the ground of the passi- vity in the Ego } is, therefore, not a proper one, for there is no such passivity. But one question may be put : What is the ground of this whole reci- procity } To say simply it is because it is, is not allowable, for only the Ego is absolutely posited ; and the mere Ego does not involve this reciprocity. Such a ground, however, if it is to be found, is not to be found in the theoretical part of the science of knowledge, because it is not involved in its funda- mental principle, that " the Ego posits itself as 152 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. determined by the Non-Ego." On the contrar}% the theoretical part presupposes such a ground. At the same time, our expression, " limited, re- stricted activity of the Ego," is now perfectly clear. It is an activity which is directed upon something in the Non-Ego, hence an objective activity. The activity of the Ego generally is not at all limited, and can not be limited ; but its positing of tJie Ego is limited by this, that it must posit a Non-Ego. II. — The form and the content of the reciprocity determine each other mutually. The form of the reciprocity is the mere mutual in- terchange of the links — the content is that in them, v/hich makes them capable of this mutual inter- change, and impels them to realize it. The charac- teristic form of the reciprocity is here (under the ca- tegory of causality) a becoming through a vanishing. (From time we must abstract as yet. The X which beconves through the — X, which vanishes, must both be thought together, or, rather, not at all in time.) The characteristic of the content of this reciprocity is essential opposition of the two links, or the qualita- tive incompatibility of both. The form is to determine the content means, the two links are essentially opposed, because and in so far as they cancel each other. Their actual mutual canceling determines the sphere of their opposition. If they do not cancel each other, they are not essentially opposed. (A seeming paradox, to be explained directly.) The content determines the form means, their THE SCIENCE OP KiXOWLEDGE. 153 essential opposition decermines their mutual cancel- ing ; only on condition that the links are opposed, and only in so far as they are mutually opposed can they cancel each other. Form and content mutually determine each other signifies, the essen- tial opposition of the links necessitates their mutual canceling, and hence their actual connection and influence upon each other, and vice versa. Both is one and the same. The real result of this synthesis is, that a neces- sary connection is posited between the links. This synthesis denies the possibility to distinguish a being in itself from a being in the reciprocity ; both are posited as interchanging links, and are other- wise not posited at all. Real and ideal opposition are one and the same. This is what appears para- doxical, but it does not appear so when it is re- membered that the one link is the Ego, to which nothing is opposed, which it does not posit as op- posed to itself, and which is opposed to nothing, but to what \t posits itself as opposed. III. — The synthetically united activity and tJie synthetically jinited reciprocity mutnally determine each other, and constitute in themselves a synthetical unity. The activity as synthetical unity may be called a mediated positing, (a positing of reality by means of a not-positing ;) the synthetically united reci- procity is the identity of essential opposition and real canceling. The former determines the latter signifies : The 154 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. niediateness of the positing is the ground and the condition of the identity of essential opposition and real canceling. These two links are identical be- cause of the niediateness of the positing. If the interchanging links were posited immedi- ately, opposition and canceling would be distinct. Call these links A and B. Let A = A and B = B ; but now posit also A = — B, in some quantitative respect, and B = — A ; and, nevertheless, they do not necessarily cancel each other. For you may abstract from their characteristic as opposites, and again view them as having been posited immedi- ately and independent of each other, (A = A and B = B,) in which case they are no longer posited as interchanging links, but also as reality in them- selves. Interchanging links can only be posited mediately ; A is = — B, and nothing else ; and B= — A, and nothing else ; and from this medi- ateness of the positing follows their essential op- position and their mutual canceling, and the iden- tity of both. For if A and B are thus posited, as existing merely in essential opposition to each other, and if they can receive no other predicate (not even that of a thing) — if A can therefore not be posited as real otherwise than through not positing B, and B not except through not positing A — their common essence evidently con- sists in this, that the one is posited through the not-positing of the other, and hence — if we abstract from an intelligence which posits them — that they do cancel each other. Their essential opposition THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 155 and mutual canceling are, therefore, identical, in so far as each link is only posited through the not- positing of another. Now, this is the case with the Ego and the Non- Ego. The Ego can transfer reality into the Non- Ego only through not positing the same in itself; and into itself only through not positing the same in the Non-Ego. (We speak here of transferred, not of absolute reality.) The essence of the Ego and the Non-Ego, therefore, as interchanging links, consists only in this, that they are opposed to each other, and cancel each other. The viediateness of the positing (that is, the law of consciousness, " no subject no object, and vice versa^') is the ground of the essential opposition of the Ego and the Non- Ego, and hence of all the reality of the Non-Ego as well as of the Ego ; that is, in so far as this real- ity is posited simply as posited, or, ideal reality ; for the absolute reality remains, of course, in the positing. This mediateness, so far as we have now advanced in our synthesis, is not again to be grounded through that whereof it is the ground, nor can it be so in any proper application of the prop- osition of the ground. The ground of this mediate- ness, therefore, can not be contained either in the reality of the Non-Ego, or in the posited reality of the Ego. The ground must, therefore, be in the absolute Ego ; and this mediateness must be itself absolute, that is, grounded in and through itself. This, on our present standpoint, very correct result establishes a new and still more abstract IS6 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. idealism than we had before. In that former ideal- ism, an itself posited activity was canceled through the nature and the essence of the Ego, canceled absolutely, without further ground ; and this abso- lute canceling made an object and subject, etc., possible. Representations developed themselves as such, out of the Ego in a manner utterly un- known and inaccessible to us. In the present idealism the activity has its law immediately in itself; it is a mediate activity and no other, simply because it is mediate. From this its mediateness every thing else, reality of the Non-Ego, and, in so far, negation of the Ego ; and negation of the Non-Ego, and, in so far, reality of the Ego, can be completely explained. Representa- tions develop themselves out of the Ego according to a determined and cognizable law of its nature. It is only the ground of this law of mediation which is here inaccessible. This idealism necessarily abolishes the former, since it explains what to the former was inexplain- able from a higher ground. The fundamental j^rin- ciple of this latter idealism would be, tJic Ego is finite simply because it is finite. Now, although such an idealism rises higher, it does not rise high enough, does not rise to the absolutely posited and unconditioned. True, linity is to be absolutely posited ; but all finite is, by its very conception, limited by its opposite, and abso- lute finity is thus, an in itself contradictory concep- tion. THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 1 57 I shall call the former idealism, which cancels something posited in itself, qualitative idealism; and the latter, which originally posits itself a limited quantity, quantitative idealism. 2d. The latter determines the former signifies : the mediateness of the positing is determined by this, that the essence of the interchanging links consists merely in their essential opposition ; only through the latter fact is the mediateness possible. For if their essence were not thereby exhausted, the not-positing of the one would by no means necessitate the positing of the other in its complete essence ; but if their essence consists only in this, then they can only be posited mediately. From this view the essential opposition is the absolute fact — not the mediateness of the positing as above — and is the ground of that mediateness. A system which takes this view, results in a quantitative realism, well to be distinguished from our previous qualitative realism. In the system of qualitative realism an independent Non-Ego, hav- ing reality in itself, impresses the Ego and restricts the activity thereof The quantitative realist re- cognizes, on the contrary, that reality is posited in the Non-Ego for the Ego only by the applying of the law of the ground, though he, also, does main- tain tJie real existence of a limitation of the Ego, whereof the Ego is not the cansc. The qualitative realist asserts the independent reality oi ?^ determin- ing ; the quantitative realist merely the independent reality of a determination. The latter says, there is 158 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. a determination in the Ego of which the ground can not be posited in the Ego. This to him is a fact ; that is, that determination exists for him abso- kitely without any ground. True, the law of the ground compels him to relate it to the Non-Ego as the real ground of that determination ; but he also knows that that law of the ground is his own, and hence he is not deceived by it. It appears at once that this system is the same as that of critical ideal- ism ; and Kant, indeed, has established no other .han this, as indeed, from the standpoint of reflec- tion he had placed himself upon, he neither could nor wished to establish another one. The above quantitative idealism is distinguished from the present quantitative realism in this, that although both assume a finity of the Ego, the former system posits that finity as absolutely posit- ed ; the latter system as accidental, but also as unex- plainable. Quantitative realism abolishes quantita- tive idealism, because it explains without its assist- ance, though making the same error, the existence of an object in consciousness, I say, with the same error, for it also can not explain, how a real deter- mination may become an ideal one, how an in itself •existing determination may become a determination for the positing Ego. True, we have seen now how the essential oppo- sition determines and grounds the mediateness of the positing ; but through what is positing itself grounded ? If?i positing is to be realized, then, of THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 1 59 course, it can only be through mediation ; but posit- ing in itself is an absolute act of the absolutely undetermined and undeterminable Ego. Hence, this system can not explain the possibility of pro- ceeding from the limited to the unlimited. The above quantitative idealism removes this difficulty by abolishing the unlimited altogether, but this involves it in the contradiction, that it absolutely posits a limited. Probably by uniting both syntheses we shall obtain a critical quantitative idealism as the true result. 3d. Each is to determine the other signifies : to opi:)Ose and to be opposed, being and being posited, ideal and real relation is to be the same. This can only be when the positing and the posited of the relation is one and the same, that is, when the posited is Ego. The Ego is to be in relation to an X, which, in so far, must be a Non-Ego, by which relation the Ego is posited only through the not positing of this Non-Ego, and vice versa. The Ego, however, is in a relation only in so far as it posits itself in a relation. Hence, it is the same whether you say of the Ego it is posited in this relation, or // posits itself in this relation. Ideal and real rela- tion are the same. Let us develop more clearly the important result of this synthesis, a result, however, which is only derived from the fundamental principle of the theo- retical part of our science, and has only validity so far as that principle has it. The Ego can only l60 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. posit through a non-positing, that is, mediately ; can only mediately posit itself as well as the Non- Ego. It is always positing, but it is posited only through positing the Non-Ego, as not posited, or through negating it. In other words, the Ego is only the opposite of the Non-Ego, and vice versa. No Ego, no Non-Ego ; no I, no Thou ; no subject, no object. Subject is that which is not object, and has no other predicate as yet, and vice versa. This result establishes the critical quantitative idealism of which we spoke. The difficidty was to assign a ground for the de- termination of the activity of the Ego as such. Quantitative realism assigns this ground to the passivity of the Ego, caused by a real Non-Ego. Quantitative idealism assigns it to the positing of the Ego, that is, posits the Ego simply as absolutely limited through itself The present system asserts that both are wrong, that the law of that determina- tion is neither a merely subjective and ideal, having its ground only in the Ego, nor an objective and real one, having its ground not in the Ego ; but that it must be both in the object and subject. How ? This question can not yet be answered. APPLICATION UNDER CATEGORY OF SUBSTAN- TIALITY. We have the same three propositions : 1st. The activity of the form and of the content mutually determine each other. THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. l6l 2d. The form and content of the reciprocity mu- tually determine each other. 3d. The synthetically united activity and the synthetically united reciprocity mutually determine each other. I. The activity of the form and of the content niii- iiLally determine each other. While the characteristic of the category of cau- sality was the positing through a non-positing, the characteristic of the activity of the form under the category of substantiality is the positing of some- thing as 7iot posited \h.roMg\\ the positing of another as posited, that is, negation through affirmation. The not-posited is posited as not posited. Hence, it is not annihilated as before, but merely excluded, excluded from a certain sphere. Hence, again, it is not negated through positing generally, but through a determined positing. The not-posited has, there- fore, merely a negative character ; it is not this de- termined sphere. Call the posited sphere A, the excluded not-posited, B. A, by itself, is posited as absolute totality ; but this can not be if B is any- wise posited. A is, therefore, posited both as total- ity and not-totality ; totality with reference to A, not-totality with reference to B. But B is merely determined negatively as not A. Hence A is posit- ed as determined, and in so far total part of an un- determined whole, which whole embraces both spheres, the determined and the undetermined 1 62 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. spheres. This higher sphere must be posited to make both lower ones possible, and the activity which posits it is the activity of the content we are looking for. Example. Let us posit iron = A as absolute totality in itself It excludes motion = B. Now take a piece of moving iron = C. By excluding motion = B from the conception of iron ^= A, you do not deny the moving iron = C, but you place this C in an undetermined sphere, because you do not know under what condition the motion = C is connected with the iron. The sphere, A, is totality of the iron, and also is it not, because it excludes = C which equally belongs to iron. Hence, you posit a higher sphere, embracing both moving and not-moving iron. In so far as iron fills this higher sphere it is substance ; in A it is merely a thing. Motion and not-motion are its accidences. The activity of the form determines that of the content signifies : only by excluding from the abso- lute totality can you posit a higher sphere ; no ex- clusion, no higher si^here ; no accidence in the Ego, no Non-Ego. The absolute totality of the Ego is positing itself . If an object is posited by it, this ob- jective positing is excluded from that sphere, and placed in the opposite sphere of not-positing itself. Not to posit itself and to posit an object is the same. It excludes simply because it excludes, and THE SCIEXCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 1 63 did it not exclude, the higher sphere of general positing would not be possible. It will be seen that the word positing itself has here a double significance, first, that of absolute totality, and se- condly, that of a determined part of an undeter- mined whole. Also, that substance signifies the all-embracing, not the permanent, as is generally supposed. (This results again in a system of quantitative idealism.) The activity of the content determines that of the form signifies : the higher sphere is absolutely posited, and only through it is the exclusion (as real act of the Ego) possible. This again opens a quali- tative realism, which maintains that the Ego and the Non-Ego are posited as opposites, that the Ego is gQnQr?i\\y positing ; and that, if the Ego does not posit the Non-Ego, it must certainly posit itself; but this mnst is accidental, and determined through the ground of the positing, which ground is not con- tained in the Ego itself. According to this realism, the Ego is a representing being, which must be governed by the quality of the things. Neither this result nor the previous one is to be valid ; both must, therefore, be mutually modified. Because the Ego is to exclude something from it- self, a higher sphere must be, and be posited ; and viee versa. Or, there is a Non-Ego because the Ego posits something as its opposite, and it posits some- thing as its opposite because a Non-Ego is, and is posited. This will again establish the above criti- cal idealism. 164 THE SCIENCE OP KNOWLEDGE. II. TJlc form and the content of the reciprocity imitual- ly determine each other. The form consists in the excluding of the links through each other. If A is posited as absolute totality, B is excluded from its sphere, and placed in the undetermined but determinable sphere B. Again, if B is considered as posited, A is now ex- cluded from the absolute totality ; that is, it belongs with B to a higher njidetermined bnt determinable sphere. (Let this be well remarked.) The content consists in this, that the totality is determinable. In the form we had two totalities : first A alone, and then A + B, If these two can not be distinguished, we have no interchange, no reciprocity. Hence, there must be a determined character of the totality as such, whereby it can be distinguished, whereby it can be determined, which is the true totality. Example. Posit iron as isolated, in rest, in space ; and you rightly ascribe motion, when it occurs, to an exter- nal cause. Still, you also and rightly now ascribe motion to iron. Your former conception of iron is, therefore, no longer sufficient, and you complete it by adding the characteristic of attractability by the magnet. Now, from the one view, rest is essen- tial to iron, and motion accidental ; from the other, both are accidental, because both are determined by the absence or presence of the magnet. Hence, you are in a quandary ; unless you can assign a THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 1 65 ground why you take the first or second view, that is, unless you can determine from what totahty you must proceed, whether from the determined totality which has been absokitely posited, or from the deter- minable totality which has arisen from it and from the excluded sphere. The form of the reciprocity determines its con- tent signifies : the mutual exclusion determines which of both totalities is absolute. That which excludes another from the totality is, in so far as it excludes, the totality, and vice versa. If the abso- lutely posited A excludes B, then, in so far, A is totality ; and if B is reflected upon, and hence A not regarded as totality, in so far A + the unde- termined B is the determinable totality. Result : There is no other ground of the totality than a rela- tive one. You may optionally take either view. Take the absolutely posited conception of iron, and rest is essential ; take its merely determinable con- ception, and rest is accidental. Both conceptions are right, and you may take whichever you choose. The distinction is purely relative. The content of the reciprocity determines its form signifies : the determinability of the totality, as explained by us, and wJucJl is therefore posited, determines the mutual exclusion ; that is, one of the totalities is the absolute one, either the de- termined (B) or the merely determinable, (A + B.) If B is the absolute totality, then that which it excludes is also absolutely excluded. Result : There is an absolute ground of the totality, and it 1 66 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. is not merely relative. It is not the same whether you take the determined or the determinable con- ception of iron, and whether you posit rest as essential or accidental to it. If from some un- known ground the determined conception of iron must be the first conception, only motion and not rest is its absolute accidence. The form and the content mutually determine each other signifies : absolute and relative ground of the determination of the totality are the same ; the relation is absolute, and the absolute nothing but a relation. Both the results heretofore attained were wrong. There is an absolute law, our synthesis now says, for the determination of the totality, but this law is not contained in either of the above modes of de- termination, but in positing both as mutiially deter- mining each other. Neither of the two totalities is the desired totality ; both together, determining each other, give the true totality. Not A is abolute total- ity, nor A 4- B, but A determined by A + B, The determinable is determined by the determined, and vice versa, and the thus resulting unity is the true totality. What does this mean : the determined and the determinable must mutually determine each other } Evidently this : the determination of that which is to be determined is determinability. It is a deter- minable, and nothing else ; therein its whole essence is expressed. This determinability is the looked-for totality ; that is, determinability is a fixed quantum, THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 1 6/ has its limits, beyond which no further determina- tion occurs, and all possible determinability lies within these limits. The Ego posits itself ; this is the absolute total- ity of the reality of the Ego. The Ego posits an object. This objective positing must be excluded from the sphere of the self-positing of the Ego ; and yet must also be ascribed to the Ego. Thus we obtain the sphere A + B as (unlimited as yet) totaHty of all the acts of the Ego. Now, both these spheres, the A and the A B, are mutually to determine each other. A gives what it has, abso- lute limit ; A -h B gives what it has, content. Thus the Ego is now positing an object, and then it is not the subject ; or the subject, and then it is not an object ; in so far as it posits itself, as posit- ing under this rule. In this manner both spheres are united, and unitedly first form a single limited sphere ; and in so far the determination of the Ego consists in its determinability through subject and object. Determined determinability is the totality we sought, and such a totality is called Substance. No substance, unless you first proceed from the ab- solutely posited, (the Ego, here,) which posits only itself; or, unless something is first excluded from it, (the Non-Ego, here.) But the substance which as such is nothing but determinability, and yet is to be fxed determinability, is no substance, (not ^//-embracing,) unless again determined by the absolutely posited, (here, by the itself-positing.) l68 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. The Ego posits itself as self-positing by excluding the Non-Ego, or it posits the Non-Ego as positing by excluding itself. Remark the two characters of the self-positing in this sentence ; the first an nn- conditional, the second a conditional positing, de- terminable by excluding the Non-Ego. Example. If the determination of iron in itself be rest, then a change of place is excluded from it, and, in so far, iron is not substance, for it is not determinable. Still, the change of place is to be ascribed to the iron. This you can not do so as utterly to cancel its rest ; for if you do, you cancel the iron itself as posited by you. Hence, you only cancel that rest in part, and the change of place is thus determined and limited by the rest of the iron ; that is, the change of place occurs only within the sphere of a certain condition, (for instance, within the attraction of a magnet.) Beyond this sphere the iron is again in rest. Who does not notice here the double sig- nificance of the word rest.? In the -first instance, it is unconditioned ; in the second, conditioned, namely, by the absence of a magnet. Again, as A + B is determined by A, so B is determined, for it now belongs to the sphere of the determined determinable ; and A itself is now a de- terminable. Hence, in so far as B itself is now de- termined, it also can determine A and B, and miist determine it in order to form an absolute relation. Hence, if A and B is posited, and A is in so far THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 169 placed within the sphere of the determinable : A and B is again determined by B. Let us explain this : The Ego is to exclude some- thing from itself. This something must be in the Ego previous to the exclusion, that is, indcpciidcvf of the excluding. It must be absolutely posited In the Ego. Hence, for this something it is acciden- tal that the Ego should exclude it, (shouM m.ake a representation of it, as we shall see hereafter.) Vn'qw without this excluding it would exist, (not without the Ego, but z;/ the Ego, of course.) The object (A + B) is the determined , its being ex- cluded, the determinable. It may be excluded or not, and still remains object. The object is, there- fore, posited here in two different ways : first, it is posited iinconditionally and absolute ; next, un- der condition of a being excluded through the Ego. Example. From the iron posited as in rest, motion is to be excluded. By the conception of iron, iron was not to involve motion ; but now motion is to be exclud- ed from the iron. Hence, motion must be posited independently of this excluding, and must be posit- ed — with reference to its not being posited in iron — absolutely. In other words, if you wish to op- pose motion to iron, you must. first know motion ; but the knowledge of motion is not given you through iron. Hence, you know it from some other source ; and since here we have only iron and mo- tion to look to, you know it absolutely. jyo THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. Now, if we start from this conception of motion, then it is accidental to this conception that it is applied to iron among other things. It is the es- sential, and iron is for it the accidental. Motion is posited absolutely. Iron is excluded from its sphere, because it is in rest. Now, you cancel rest in iron and ascribe motion to it. And, whereas, at first the conception of motion was abso- lute and unconditioned, it is now conditioned by the canceling of rest in iron. The result of our synthesis was this : The totality consists simply in the complete rela- tion, and there is nothing in itself determined whereby it is determined. The totality consists in the completeness of a relation, not of a reality. The links of a relation, singly considered, are accidenccs ; their totality, substance. Substance is nothing fixed, but a mere change. If a substance is to be determined, or, in other words, if something determined is to be thought as substance, the change, it is true, must proceed from one of the links, which is in so far fixed as the change is to be determined. But it is not absolutely fixed, for I might as well proceed from its o^Dposite link, and then the former link would be accidental, etc. In short, the accidences, synthetically united, give the substance ; and the substance is nothing but the totality of accidences. A permanent substrate must not be entertained. Every accidence is its own substrate, and the substrate of its opposite acci- dences. The positing Ego, by the most marvelous THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. I/I of its powers, (productive imagination,) holds the vanishing accidence firml}-, until it has compared it with the accidence whereby it is pushed aside. This power is it which, from perennial opposites, forms a unity which enters between moments (con- tradictions) that would mutually cancel each other, and thus maintains both ; this power is it which alone makes life and consciousness (and particularly consciousness as a continuing series of time-mo- ments) possible ; and all this it achieves simply by this, that it diverts and guides along itself and in itself accidences which have no common bearer, and can have none, because they would mutually destroy each other. III. — The activity as synthetical nnity, and the re- ciprocity as syntJictical nnity, mutnally determine each other. The activity as synthetical unity can be best characterized as an absolute gathering together ajid holding firmly of opposites (subjective and objective) in the category of determinability, wherein they are also opposed to each other. To make this synthesis clearer, let us compare it with the former synthesis (§ 3) of the Ego and the Non-Ego through quantity. Just as the Ego was there in its quality, absolutely posited as absolute reality, so here we absolutely posit sometJiing, that is, a quantitatively determined, in the Ego, or, in other words, so here we absolutely posit the Ego as determined quantity ; 3. something suhiQCtive is po- 172 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. sited as an absolutely subjective ; and this proceed- ing here is a thesis, and a quantitative thesis in dis- tinction from the above qualitative thesis. From a thesis, however, all the modes of acting of the Ego must proceed. (At least it is a thesis in our theoretical part, because we can not in it break through the limit of its fundamental principle ; when we do so in the practical part, we shall see that it is also a synthesis, a synthesis which results from the highest thesis.) Again, as in § 3, a Non-Ego was opposed to the Ego as opposite quality, so here to the subjective is opposed an objective, by the mere exclusion thereof from the sphejre of the subjective ; hence, merely through and by means of qiiantity, (of limi- tation, determination,) and this proceeding is a quantitative antithesis, as that in § 3 was a qualita- tive antithesis. But now the subjective is not to be canceled by the objective, and vice versa, precise- ly as the Ego was not to be canceled by the Non- Ego, and vice versa; both are to coexist. They must, therefore, be united, which is done through that wherein they are equal, determinability. Both, — that is, not the subject and object in themselves, but the subjective and objective posited through the thesis — are mutually determinable through each other, and only in so far as they are so determinable can they be taken up and held together by the ac- tive power of this synthesis, (productive imagina- tion.) Again, as above, this antithesis is not possible THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 173 without thesis, because only to the posited can be opposited ; and here also che required thesis is, in its content, not possible without the content of the antithesis ; for, until something is absolutely deter- mined, that is, until the conception of quantity can be applied to it, it must exist in its quality. But in form, again, the antithesis is not possible without synthesis, for otherwise the antithesis would cancel the posited of the thesis, and would thus be no antithesis, but would be itself a thesis. All the three acts are ojily one and the same act, and are dis- tinguished only in reflection as moments of one act. The reciprocity as synthetic unity is sufficiently ■characterized as mere relation, as mere mutual ex- cluding, or as determinability. This, of course, must be abstractly conceived — indeed, in our whole theo- retical part, we must always abstract from sonie- ihing — must be conceived as mere relation without any thing related. A and B, for instance, are op- posites ; if one is posited, the other is not ; never- theless they are both to be posited, and not merely in part, (quantitatively limited,) but wholly. But they can not be thought together, except in so far as they iniitnally cancel each other. You can not think A, nor can you think B. But you can think their U7iion. Example. Posit in the physical time-moment light = A, and in the immediately succeeding moment darkness = B. Then they are divided. But the moments join €ach other. Hence, they are not divided. For, let 174 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. the dividing line be D, then D is not hght, which is in A ; nor darkness, which is in B. Hence it is nei- ther. But you can also say it is both, for there is no such line. Of course, the line D is extended by ima- gination to a moment in the latter view, and so it is. But so are also A and B, and imagination is their origin. Hence, I caji and I must, moreover, extend D, if I want to think the immediate junction of A and B. Productive power of imagination is indeed our most marvelous function, and upon it the whole mechanism of human spirit may be grounded. I. The activity as synthesis determines the reci- procity as synthesis means, the joijiing of the in- terchanging links as such is conditioned by an ab- solute activity of the Ego, by means whereof this Ego opposes an objective to a subjective, and unites both. Only in the Ego, and by virtue of this act of the Ego, are they reciprocal interchanging links, and do they join together. It is clear that this result is idealistic. If the activity established in it is taken as exhausting the essence of the Ego, representation consists in .his, that the Ego posits a subjective and posits an objective in opposition to it, etc. We discovered above a law of the mediateness of positing, accord- ing to which no objective could be posited without canceling a subjective, and vice versa. To this law is here added the determination that both are syn- thetically united, and must be posited through one and the same act of the Ego ; and by this addi- THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 1/5 tion the unity of that wherein the reciprocity occurs, while the reciprocal links remain opposites, is ex- plained, which the law of mere mediation could not ■explain. This result, therefore, establishes an intelligence .as existing with all its possible determinations through its mere spontaneity. The Ego is consti- tuted as it posits itself, and because it posits itself as thus constituted. Still there is here also a de- fect left yet. For, go back in the series as far as you will, you must always arrive finally at something already existing in the Ego, wherein a subjective -and objective are already posited as opposites. The existence of the subjective may thus be ex- plained, for it follows from the self-positing of the •absolute Ego, but not that of the objective. 2. The reciprocity determines the activity signi- fies, not through the real existence of opposites, but through their mere joining or touching each other in consciousness is oppositing and the gathering together of the opposites through the activity of the Ego made possible ; that joining is the condi- tion of this activity. This sentence says, in complement of the pre- vious result, that the excluded objective need not have this existence ; it will suffice if a cJicck has exis- tence for the Ego, that is to say, if there is a ground — unknown — but not contained in this activity of the Ego — why it must limit itself, and thus op- pose an objective to a subjective. In other words, the presupposition of such a system — realistic as il 176 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. is, but more abstract than all previous realistic sys- tems — is, tJiat the Ego is merely determinable, (or, has in itself the problem to determine itself.) This realism, therefore, does not posit a determination (like the quantitative realism) as its presupposition, but leaves it to the active Ego to posit this deter- mination. (The determinability which it posits in the Ego we shall hereafter learn to know 2iS feeling. For, though feeling is a determination of the Ego,. it is not one of the Ego as intelligence, that is, of the Ego, which posits itself as determined by the Non-Ego, of which we speak here.) This system has the defect of every realism, that it views the Ego as a Non-Ego ; and hence does not explain the transition from the one to the other. The determinability, or the requirement that the Ego shall determine itself, is posited, that is true : but it is posited without any activity of the Ego. Hence it is clear enough how the Ego could be detcnninable for sometJiing outside of the Ego, but not how the Ego can be determinable thro7igh and for itself. For the Ego is only determinable in so far as it posits itself as determinable ; and how it can posit itself as determinable, or as being re- quired by its very nature to determine itself, this- has not yet been explained. 3. Both results are to be synthetically united ; the activity and the reciprocity are mutually to deter- mine each other. We found that we could not assume that the mere reciprocity, or a mere check, existing with- THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 177 out any action of the positing Ego, could propose to the Ego the task of limiting itself ; for the ground of explanation did not contain what was to be explained. We shall, therefore, have to show that that check does not exist without the action of the Ego, but that it is, on the contrary, directed upon the activity of the Ego in positing itself ; that this activity, ever, as it were, proceeding outwardly, is thereby driven back (reflected) into itself ; and from this reflection we shall then show easily how self-limitation, and every thing else resulting there- from, follows naturally. This will give us a true synthesis of the reciprocity and the activity. The check — not posited by the positing Ego — occurs only in so far as the Ego is active, and is therefore only a check, in so far as the Ego is active ; the activity of the Ego is the condition of the check. No activity of the Ego, no check. On the other hand, the self-determining of the Ego will be con- ditioned by the check. No check, no self-determi- nation of the Ego. Again, no self-determination, no object and subject, etc. Let us make clearer this very important and final result. The activity of the Ego in gathering together opposites, and the in itself independent joining together of these opposites are to be one and the same. The chief distinction lies evidently in the gathering together and the Joining together. How the latter is conditioned by the former is easily seen. For joining they are only in so far as a limit 1 78 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE, is posited between them, for tliey are complete op- posites, and this limit is not posited by either of them, but by an independent positing. But the limit is only that which both have in common ; to posit their limits, therefore, is to gather them toge- ther, and to gather them together is only possible by positing their limits. They join only on condi- tion of a gathering together, for and through that which gathers them together. But, again, the gathering together, or the positing of a limit, is only to be possible on condition of a joining together ; or — since that which is active in this limit-positing is to be one of the joining links, and only as active — on condition of a check upon the activity of this active link. The activity must, ■therefore, extend into the unlimited, infinite, undeter- minable. If it did not, its limitation would not in- volve at all that its activity had been checked ; for the limitation might be involved in its own concep- tion, (as is the case in every system which holds that the Ego is finite.) In other words, the opposites here held together are essential opposites, without any point of union. All finite things, however, are not essential opposites ; they are equal in the con- ception of determinability. And all infinites, in so far as there can be a plurality, are thus equal in the conception of undeterminability. Hence, the only two essential opposites are : the infinite and the finite, of which we have spoken here. Both are to be one and the same ; that is, no infi- nite, no limitation, and vice versa ; both are tmited in THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 1/9 one and the same synthetic unity. If the activity of the Ego were not infinite, it could not limit this acti- vity itself The activity of the Ego consists in un- limitedly positing itself This activity is checked. If the activity of the Ego were thrown back by this check, that activity which lies beyond the line of the check would be completely annihilated and can- celed ; and the Ego in so far would not posit at all. But it is to posit even beyond this line. It is to limit itself, that is, it is in so far to posit itself as not positing ; it is to place in this sphere the undeter- mined, unlimited, infinite limit = B, and hence it must be infinite. Again, if the Ego did not limit itself, it would not be infinite. The Ego is only what it posits itself as being. It is infinite signifies : it posits itself as infinite ; determines itself by the predicate of the infinite ; or it limits itself as substrate of the infinite ; or it distinguishes itself from its infi- nite activity, which, nevertheless, is also to be its ■own activity, and must, therefore, be in one and the same act distinguished and taken back as its own, (A -f B must be determined by A.) By thus taking it back into itself, it determines the ac- tivity, and hence makes it not infinite ; at the same time it is to be infinite, and hence it must be posit- ed outside of the Ego. This interchange of the Ego with itself, in posit- ing itself at the same time as finite and infinite — an interchange which is, as it were, a self-contradic- tion, and which reproduces itself constantly, since l80 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. the Ego seeks to unite what is not unitable, now- trying to take the infinite into the form of the finite, and now again driven back to posit it outside of that form, but in the same moment attempting again to seize it in the form of the finite — this interchange is the power of Imagination. By this power the gathering together and the joining is completely united. The joining of oppo- sites, or the limit, is itself a production of the gath- ering power, for the sake of gathering it. (Abso- lute thesis of the imagination, which in so far is absolutely productive.) In so far as the Ego and this production of its activity are opposed, the join- ing members themselves are opposed, and in the limit neither of them are posited. (Antithesis of imagination.) But in so far as both are again united, as that productive activity is to be ascribed to the Ego, the limiting links themselves are gath- ered together in the limit. (Synthesis of imagina- tion, which in this its antithetical and synthetical activity, is reproductive, as we shall see hereafter.) The opposites are to be gathered together in the conception of mere determinability, not of determi- nation. If the limit between the opposites (the Ego and the object) were fixed and unchangeable, then the union would be through detcnniuation, and the totality would not be complete ; for A + B woula be determined only through the determined A, and not through the undetermined B. Hence, that limit is not fixed. The power of imagination oosits, therefore, an infinite limit, the product of its THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. l8l infinitely extending activity. This positing activity it tries to ascribe to itself, (to determine A + B by A.) If it succeeded, the activity would no longer be infinite, but determined, because posited in a determined subject. Hence, the imagination is driven back into the infinite, that is, is called upon to determine A + B by B, Hence, also, only de- terminability occurs here, but not determination it- self Indeed, the imaginative power posits no fixed limit at all, for it has no fixed stand-point ; only reason posits something as fixed by first fixing the power of imagination. Imagination is a power which floats between determination and undetermi- nation, between the finite and the infinite ; and hence, A -F B is in it always determined at the same time by the determined A and the undeter- mined B, which is indeed the above synthesis of imagination. This floating imagination character- izes through its product ; it produces it, as it were, while it floats, and through its floating. This floating of imagination between irreconcilable links, this its self-contradiction is, as we shall here- after show, that which extends the condition of the Ego to a /zV/^r-moment. (For pure reason every thing is at once ; only for imagination is there a time.) Imagination can not stand this floating long, that is, not longer than a moment, (except in the feeling of the sublime, where astonishment, a halt of the interchange in time, arises.) Reason steps in, (and thus there arises a reflection,) and 1 82 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. determines imagination to take B up in the deter- mined A, the subject ; but as soon as this is accom- phshed, the determined A must again be limited by an infinite B, etc. etc., until it has arrived at a com- plete determination of the (here theoretical) reason, which needs no other limiting B outside of reason in imagination, that is, until it has arrived at the representation of the representing. In the practical sphere the power of imagination continues in an infinite direction to the absolutely undeterminable idea of the highest unity, to determine which would be possible only after a completed infinity, which is itself impossible in time. FINAL REMARKS, The fundamental principle of our theoretical part, the Ego posits itself as determined through the Non-Ego, has now been exhausted. The Ego can not posit itself, can not be subject, without positing itself as determined through the Non-Ego. (No object, no subject.) At the same time, the Non- Ego being its own product, it also posits itself as determining. (No subject, no object.) The problem how two opposites, the Ego and the Non-Ego, could be posited together as deter- mining each other, is not only shown up as possible, but it has been shown that without it the funda- mental requirement, the self-positing of the Ego, is not possible. Hence, what was at first problemati- cal has now apodictical certainty ; and this part of THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 1 83 the science is exhausted, since we have returned to our first starting-point and proved it. Again, if our result has shown itself as the truth, it must appear as an original fact in our conscious- ness, that is, not — like the other thoughts which arose during our investigation, (for instance, like the real- istic conception of an absolute substance of the Non-Ego) — an artificially created fact, not a fact of our reflective consciousness. The science of knowledge shows up facts, and thereby distinguishes itself from an empty formula- philosophy ; but it does not postulate facts ; it proves that something must be a fact. If this fact is to be a fact in the consciousness of an Ego, the Ego must posit it as in its conscious- ness ; or, in other words, must try to explain it to itself. This it does, of course, according to the laws of its own being. Hereafter we shall there- fore observe how the Ego proceeds to modify, de- termine, and work out that fact which was the result of our investigation. It is clear that thus we shall obtain a second dis- tinct series of reflection. In the first, we had a series wherein, by pure spontaneity of thought, we produced the object as well as the form of our re- flection, and finally arrived at the only possible result, as moreover a fact to be found in conscious- ness. Now, we have to reflect upon this fact, as a fact already in this consciousness, which, therefore, is not produced, but merely raised to consciousness. Hence, while formerly we had to wade through a 1 84 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. number of hypotheses in order to reach the final truth, now these hypotheses vanish, and we have ■only to deal with realities. Both modes of reflection take opposite directions. The first one started from the proposition : The Ego posits itself as determined through the Non-Ego, and proceeded to the fact ; the second one starts from the fact and goes back to the first sentence, which it then shows up to be a fact ; that is, it pro- •ceeds until it has established as a fact that the Ego posits itself, as positing itself determined through the Non-Ego. Now, since the fact is the point of union of both reflections, and since the fact is a synthesis of two •opposites, it seems that the same opposites which the fact had for the first reflection must appear to the second reflection, and that the second reflection will only be a repetition of the first. Hence, if both are, nevertheless, to be distinct, the two series of reflections must receive a distinct characteristic in this very last synthesis of the fact. What is this character } In the first reflection both opposites are merely opposites — a mere relation ; the one is what the other is not ; purely negative character — nothing positive. Pure thoughts, without reality. Each annihilates the other ; and as neither can appear without its opposite, which annihilates it, neither appears. Our consciousness is empty ; neither can fill it. It is true, our first series of reflection would, THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 1S5 therefore, have been in itself impossible, but for a certain deception of imagination, which always made us put a substrate under these mere oppo- sites. This deception we did not and could not wish to remove ; all that was necessary was to de- duct it at the conclusion from the final result of our calculation as we now do. But in the second reflection, after the synthesis, they have changed to something tangible, which con- sciousness can seize. They become for the reflection. (Precisely as light and darkness did, which did not annihilate each other in our illustration, but became something tangible in the line D, through the power of imagination.) We have already seen how this change is effect- ed in the synthesis by productive imagination. Both opposites are to be thought as one. This they can not be, and in the endeavor so to think them they receive in their vintual relation to each other a certain extension and content which will ajDpear hereafter as the manifold in time and space. The condition of this endeavor is called contemplation. The power active in it, productive imagination, as we have already said. Thus it appears how the absolute contradiction, which threatened to destroy a theory of human knowledge, here becomes the only condition which makes it possible. We could not see how it would ever be possible for us to unite absolute opposites ; now we see that an explanation of the occurrences in our mind would not at all be possible without absolute opposites, since that power of imagination tSd the science of knowledge. upon which all these occurrences are based would not be possible at all, unless absolute opposites, not unitable and completely contradictory to the Ego, did occur. And this serves at once as the clearest illustration that our system is correct, and that the explanation has been exhaustive. The presupposed can only be explained by the discovered, and vice versa. From the absolute opposition results the whole mechanism of the human mind ; and this whole mechanism can only be explained through an absolute opposition. At the same time, we now see clearly how idea- lity and reality can be one and the same ; and lead the one to the other, and are only different when regarded as different. The absolute opposites (the finite subjective and the infinite objective) are in advance of the synthesis mere thoughts, and hence ideal, in the sense in which we have always used the word. As soon as they are to be united in thinking, but can not be so united, they receive — through the floating of thinking, which in this its function is called imagination — reality, because through this floating they become capable of being contemplated. In other words, they receive there- by reality generally, for there is and can be no other reality than by means of contemplation. Now, by abstracting again from this contemplation — as can be done for mere thinking, though not for consci- ousness generally — that reality changes again into ideality ; that is, its being is solely derived from the »aws of the power of representation. THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 1 87 We therefore teach here that all reality — of course, for tis — is solely produced through imagi- nation. One of the greatest thinkers of our age, Kant, who otherwise teaches the same system, so far as I have knowledge thereof, calls this a decep- tion through imagination. But every deception can be avoided. Now, if it is shown, as our system is to show, that that so-called deception of imagina- tion is the ground of the possibility of our consci- ousness, of our life, and of our being for us, that is, of our being as Ego, then it can not be removed, unless we desire to abstract from the Ego, which is a contradiction, since the abstracting can not ab- stract from itself. Hence, the deception does not deceive, but gives us truth, and the only possible truth. To assume that it deceives is to establish a skepticism which teaches to doubt one's own being. III. SECOND PART THEORETICAL PART SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. Theoretical Part SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. The result of the first part of the theoretical part of the science of knowledge, and which we have postulated as necessarily occurring in conscious- ness, was this : By means of an as yet incompre- hensible check upon the absolute activity of the Ego, the power of imagination produces out of the two directions thereby occasioned, namely, the ori- ginal and the reflected directions of the activity, a composite of both directions. We have said that this fact, since it is to be in the Ego, must be posited, that is, originally deter- mined and grounded in and by the Ego ; and that this positing of it would give us a second part of the theoretical part. For, whereas the first part only proceeds to show up the fact, the second part involves a system of all the facts which occur in consciousness in its original explanation of that 192 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. one fact. Orighml explanation, for it is not, as the links of the first part were, created by us, but is originally within us, and we only make ourselves conscious of its shape in us by this explanation. Kant proceeded from the assumption of a mani- fold which was to be collected in the unity of con- sciousness ; he proceeded from the particular to the general. He thus attained a general, but only a collective general, not an infinite general. For finity opens no path to infinity, whereas there is a path from undetermined and undeterminable in- finity to finity, by means of the determining power. (Hence, all finite is product of that power.) We, therefore, take the opposite way, and prove that there is given a manifold for empirical conscious- ness, which proof runs in this wise : the given must be so^nething. As such there must be an- other, which is also something. When this proof shall be possible, we enter upon the sphere of the particular. The method of the theoretical science of know- ledge has been described before, and is simple and easy. The thread of our argument is carried along in accordance with the principle : Nothing apper- tains to the Ego bnt what it posits in itself. We make the deduced fact our starting-point, and see how the Ego may proceed to posit it in itself. This positing of the fact is again a fact, and must also be posited by the Ego in itself, and in this manner we continue until we have arrived at the highest theoretical fact, namely, the fact by wiiich THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. I93 the Ego posits itself consciously as determined through the Non-Ego. Thus, the theoretical sci- ence of knowledge closes with its fundamental prin- ciple, returns into itself, and is completed through itself. DEDUCTION OF SENSATION. The conflict of opposite directions of the activity of the Ego, which have been described in the first part, is something distinguishable in the Ego. As sure as this conflict is in the Ego, it must be posit- ed by the Ego in the Ego, and hence must be dis- tinguished. The Ego posits this conflict signifies, firstly : The Ego opposits itself to this conflict. Hitherto, that is, on this stand-point of reflection, nothing has been posited in the Ego ; nothing is in it but what originally pertains to it, pn7'e activity. The Ego opposits something to itself can, therefore, here signify nothing but : it posits something as not pure activity. And thus the condition of the Ego in the conflict of opposite directions is posited as the opposite of the pure activity of the Ego. Hence, it is posited as mixed, as itself resisting and self-annihilating activity. (This act of the Ego here shown up, whereby it posits that condition of a conflict as the opposite of its free activity, is purely antithetical.) We do not investigate at all here, how, in what manner, and through what power the Ego can posit any thing ; since in this whole theory we only speak of the products of its activity. But we have sug- 194 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. gested already in the first part, that, if the conflict is ever to be posited in the Ego, and if ever any thing further is to result from it, then, through the mere positing of the conflict, the conflict as such, that is, the floating of imagination between the opposites, must stop, and only the trace of the con- flict must remain as a sometJiing, as a possible sub- stance. How this may be done we can see here already, although we do not yet see the power through which it is done. For : The Ego must posit that conflict of opposite di- rections, or opposite powers ; must, therefore, posit both powers, and both in conflict, in opposite, but mutually each other balancing activity. But oppo- site activity, which balances itself, cancels itself, and nothing remains. Yet something is to remain, and to be posited. Hence, there remains 3. perma- nent stibstance, a something which has power, but can not actively utter it on account of the opposite activity — a substrate of the power. Any one may convince himself of this at any moment by an ex- periment. And this substrate, which is the impor- tant point here, remains not as 2^ preposited, but as mere product of the nnion of opposite activities. This is the ground of all substance, and of all possibly remaining substrate in the Ego, (and nothing is outside of the Ego,) as will be always more clearly seen. The Ego is to posit that conflict of directions in itself Hence, there must be in the Ego not only a ground of distinction, but also a ground of rela- THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. IQS tion with this condition ; and since the Ego is as yet nothing but pure activity, this ground of re- lation must lie in the pure activity. In other words, the conflict of opposite directions must also contain pure activity ; or, rather, pure activity must be posited — synthetically transferred into it. The conflicting activity of the Ego has just been posited as not pure. Now, it is to be posited 2iSptire, in order to be related to the Ego. It is to be pure, and to be not pure. Hence, it is to be opposed to itself But this is a contradiction, and can only be if there is a third synthetical link of union, where- in this contradiction is made possible. This third link must therefore be posited. Such a third link is an activity (of the Non-Ego) opposed to all activity of the Ego generally. For the conflict of opposite directions can now, by means of this third link, be posited as pure ac- tivity, when the opposite activity of the Non-Ego is abstracted from ; and is not pure activity, but objective activity, when the activity of the Non- Ego is placed in relation to it. Hence, it is pure, and is not pure, under condition ; and this condi- tion makes the contradiction possible. The act shown up here is thetical, antithetical, and synthetical, all at once. Thetical, in so far as it absolutely posits an unperceivable opposite acti- vity of the Non-Ego. {How this can be done will be shown hereafter ; we only show now that it must be done.) Antithetical, in so far as, by the positing or not positing of a condition, it posits one and the 196 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. same activity of the Ego in opposition to itself. Synthetical, in so far as it posits this activity as one and the same, by positing the activity of the Non-Ego as an accidental condition. We now see clearly how the Ego can posit the condition of a conflict of contradictory direc- tions in itself. It can do so, because that condition may also be considered as pure activity of the Ego, that is, when we abstract from the influence of the activity of the Non-Ego ; and becomes objective activity only through that utterly foreign influence of the Non-Ego. It is to be remembered that this condition of contradictory directions is posited in the Ego to- gether ivitJi all its syntJietical cojitent heretofore dis- covered ; although the gromid of relation is only the pure activity of that condition. Now, in thus relating itself to (positing within itself) the condition of contradictory directions, by means of an activity altogether opposed to the Ego, the Ego invariably excludes that activity from itself, no matter whether it regards its own activity as pure or as objective. For in either case the Ego posits that opposite activity as the condition of the relation ; in the first case, as the condition from which it must abstract ; in the second case, as the condition it must reflect upon. Here we have the highest ground of all externalization of the Ego ; the ground why the Ego goes beyond itself and posits something as external to itself Here we see for the first time clearly how something, as it were, THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 197 loosens itself from the Ego, which will probably change gradually by further determination into an external universe. It is because the Ego in either case excludes, posits outside, externalizes that acti- vity of the Non-Ego. This relation of the condition of contradictory direction to the Ego is called sensation ; a discover- ing, a finding of a foreign other. It is the can- celed, repressed activity of the Ego which is felt in sensation. It is felt, found as something foreign, because it is canceled, limited ; whereas, the origi- nal activity of the Ego is pure and absolute. Hence, it is externalized. But it is also felt in sensation, ill the Ego, because it is only canceled activity on condition of an opposite activity, without which it would not be canceled but pure activity. DEDUCTION OF CONTEMPLATIOX. We have deduced sensation as an act of the Ego, whereby it relates a foreign something in itself to itself, and posits it as its own. The act, sensation, we now know, and also its object, that which enters sensation. But we do not yet know the sensating; that is, the Ego, active in that relation ; nor do we know yet the opposite activity of the Non-Ego which was excluded in the sensation. Let us now seek to know of them. Sensation occurs in the Ego ; hence, the Ego must posit it originally in itself How does the Ego posit sensation in itself; or how does it posit 198 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. itself as the sensating ? To do this it must first be able to distinguish between its activity in the sen- sation and the object of the sensation. The object of sensation is activity of the Ego, in so far as it is considered as in opposition to another equal acti- vity ; as not-activity which would be activity, if the opposite activity were removed ; as latent activity, substance, or substrate of power. The activity of the Ego in sensation, to be dis- tinguished from this latent activity, must, therefore, be posited as not suppressed, not checked ; hence, as real activity. Both the activity of the object of sensation and of the sensating are to be posited in the Ego. Hence, there must be a ground of relation, of equal- ity, of these two opposites. This ground of rela- tion must be both, real activity and suppressed ac- tivity. As real activity, it must be a positing of the Ego ; the Ego must be its real ground. As sup- pressed activity, it must be a determined, limited positing ; but the Ego can not limit itself The ground of limitation must, therefore, be in the Non- Ego. The Non-Ego is its ideal ground, is the ground that it has quantity at all. It is to be both together, to be regarded in both ways. Its limitation is also to have its ground in the Ego ; and its being its ground also in the Non-Ego. Ideal and real ground are to be both one and the same. The act is to be regarded absolutely as both ; as the abso- lute act of the Ego in regard to both its being and determinateness ; and as the absolute act of the THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 1 99 Non-Ego in regard to both its being and determi- nateness. Such an act is called contemplation. The Ego contemplates a Non-Ego, In the con- templation the Ego posits itself as absolutely inde- pendent of the Non-Ego ; contemplates it because it does so, without outward force. It posits by its own activity, and with the consciousness of its activity, each of the characteristics (qualities) of the Non- Ego, But, at the same time, it posits them as merely reproductions of the characteristics of an external something. This external something is to have the same characteristics originally and inde- pendent of the Ego, and is to have them according to its own laws, not by virtue of the laws of the con- sciousness of the Ego, As the Non-Ego is not the cause that the Ego contemplates it, so the Ego is not the cause of the determinateness of the Non- Ego ; both are to be utterly independent, and yet in complete harmony. The truth is, if it were pos- sible to regard the Non-Ego as in itself, and not as in the contemplation, and the contemplating Ego as in itself, and not as in relation to the contem- plated Non-Ego, they would both be found deter- mined in the same manner, and hence their har- mony. Wc have now deduced the ground of all cogni- tion as such ; we have shown why the Ego is and must be intelligence, namely, because the Ego must originally (that is, without consciousness and for the very sake of making consciousness possible) 200 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE, unite a contradiction existing zvithin itself, between its activity and its passivity. It is clear that we could not have made this deduction had we not gone beyond all consciousness. We add the following for the purpose of throwing a clearer light on the foregoing, and of promoting an insight into our method. In our deductions we always regard only the product of an act of the hu- man mind, not the act itself But in every subse- quent deduction the act which gave rise to the first product becomes itself product by a new act which gives rise to it. Thus, whatever is established in every preceding deduction without any further de- termination simply as an act of the mind, is posited and thus further determined in every subsequent deduction. So, also, in the present case. If we look close, we shall find that the contemplation, just now synthetically deduced, is to be found already in the previous deduction as an act. That act con- sisted in this : The Ego, we found, must posit its conflicting activity, as pure or as not pure under condition, in the Ego. Such an act of positing is evidently the contemplation now deduced. In it- self, as act, it is solely grounded in the Ego, in the postulate that the Ego must posit in itself whatso- ever is to occur in the Ego. But it also posits something in the Ego which is absolutely not to have its ground in the Ego, but in the Non-Ego, namely, the impression of the act. As act this con- templation is completely independent of the impres- sion and the impression of it ; both proceed in pa- rallel. THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 201 UNION OF SENSATION AND CONTEMPLATION. How can the Ego posit itself as the sensating ? or, popularly expressed, how does the Ego manage in order to have sensation ? This was the question we had to solve. The deduced contemplation would , seem to preclude the possibility of such a positing. For contemplation, though as act having its ground in the Ego, posits something in the Ego which has its absolute ground in the Non-Ego. The Ego is to posit something foreign to it in itself; this foreign something is not-activity, or passivity, and the Ego is to posit this passivity in itself through activity ; the Ego is, therefore, to be active and passive together, and only on the suppo- sition of such a union of activity and passivity is sensation possible. We must, therefore, show up a third link, wherein activity and passivity are so thoroughly united that tJiis determined activity is not possible without this determined passivity, and vice versa ; that one can only be explained through the other, and that each considered in itself is in- complete. No activity in the Ego can be so related to pas- sivity as to produce it ; for, in that case, the Ego would both posit and annihilate something in itself at the same time, which is a contradiction. But the activity may be so related to the passivity as to determine it, to draw its limit. And this is indeed an activity which is not possible without a passi- vity. For the Ego can not cancel itself a part of 202 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. its activity ; the canceling must occur tlirough something outside of the Ego. The Ego can, there- fore, draw no hmit, unless a something to be Hmited has been given it externally. Determining is, there- fore, an activity which necessarily relates itself to a passivity. Likewise passivity is necessarily related to an activity when it is considered as simply a limitation of activity. Our third link is, therefore, limitation. Sensation is only possible, therefore, in so far as the Ego and the Non-Ego mutually limit each other, and extends no further than this common limit. Beyond the limit the Ego is no longer sen- sating, but intelligence. By means of limitation, therefore, can the Ego be posited as the sensating. If it were not limited by an opposite, the Ego could not be posited as the sensating. But the Ego is to be limited for itself, is to posit itself as the limited, the sensating. In so far as the Ego is limited, it only extends to the limit ; but, in so far as it posits itself as limited, it necessarily goes beyond the limit. The Ego is posited as limit- ed means, therefore : in so far as it extends merely to the limit, the Ego is opposed to an unlimited Ego which goes beyond the limit. Such an un- limited Ego must, therefore, be posited for the pur- pose of relating the limited Ego to it ; and this Ego is unlimited and unlimitable in so far as its activity is altogether grounded in itself; or in so far as it is ideal activity, while as limited Ego it is real activity. THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 203 The real activity of the Ego only goes to the limit ; its ideal activity extends beyond that limit. Neither activity is without the other. Ideality and reality are synthetically united in the Ego. The real activity can be related to the Ego, be- cause it is also ideal ; and by reason of this, its very ideality, (freedom, spontaneity,) it is ascribed to the Ego as real and limited activity, or as sensa- tion. Now, it will be observed that the ideal activity has no relation at all to a Non-Ego, is purely ideal. The Non-Ego being thus invisible to that ideal activity, so the Ego also is invisible to it. We, looking down upon the Ego, see the Ego act, it is true, but the Ego itself does not posit itself on this stand-point as acting. It forgets, if we may say so, itself in the object of its activity ; and thus we have an activity which has all the appearance of a passi- vity. The act is an unconscious contemplation. The Ego is t-he contemplated, in so far as it has sensa- tion ; but it is also the contemplating, only not con- scious thereof, not positing itself as contemplating. Here we first meet with a substrate for the Ego, namely, the pure activity of the Ego which is po- sited as being, although there be no foreign in- fluence upon it. The being of this activity is inde- pendent of all foreign influence upon the Ego ; but, since it can be posited only through its opposite, the positedncss of this activity is dependent upon a foreign influence. Sensation is to be posited. This is our task p 204 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. But sensation is only possible in so far as the sen- sating is directed upon an object of sensation, and posits the same in the Ego. Hence, the object of sensation must also be related to the Ego by the mediating conception of limitation. True, it has already been thus related in our first deduction of sensation. But at present sensation itself is to be posited. We have just thus posited it by means of a contemplation ; but this contem- plation excluded the object of sensation. Therein it was insufficient, for the object of sensation must also be posited as included in and appropriated by the contemplation. This appropriation is to be achieved by means of the conception of limitation, and is only possible if the limitation is posited. The solution, therefore, required is, how is the object of sensation limited ? Evidently, the very fact of its being excluded in sensation, and posited as limiting this sensation, proves that it is posited as limited by the Ego, or as a Non-Ego. But again, because it is thus limited by, excluded from, the Ego, it is also posit- ed, in a higher sense, in the Ego. The Ego limits it ; hence, it must be in the Ego. And now we see clearly how the object of sensa- tion is placed in relation to the Ego by the concep- tion of limitation. The limitation is the act of the Ego, whereby the object of sensation is necessarily placed within its sphere of action, and appropriated by the Ego as its own. THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 20$ EXPLANATORY. In our deduction of sensation we already touched this point. There the object of sensation was re- lated to the Ego, by the positing of an activity op- posed to the Ego as the condition of such relation ; that is, as an activity which might or might not be posited. The Ego was, therefore, endowed with the faculty of positing or not-positing something. Mark well : not the faculty to posit, nor the faculty not to posit, but the faculty to posit or not to posit ; that is, the power to posit a something, and not posit this same something in one and the same synthetically united act. Namely : Sensation, we had shown, is only possi- ble if the Non-Ego is posited as accidental condi- tion of the object of sensation ; hozv this positing was done we did not stop to inquire. But this positing can only be achieved if the Ego posits and not-posits at the same time ; hence, such an act of positing and not-positing must necessarily occur in sensation as a connecting link. Now let us see how such an act is accomplished. The activity in this positing and not-positing is evidently ideal activity. It goes beyond the point of limitation. It has, moreover, its ground only in the Ego, since we deduced it solely from the re- quirement that the Ego must posit in itself what- ever is to be in the Ego. But, if the activity is thus solely grounded in the Ego, it is a mere not-posit- 206 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. ing, and no positing whatever ; it is simply pure activity. But this activity is also to be a positing ; and it is a positing, because it does not cancel or diminish the activity of the Non-Ego, but only places it beyond its own sphere ; and since a Non-Ego is never beyond the sphere of the Ego, but only op- posed to it, the Ego by this its activity posits the Non-Ego — only it posits it throughout an arbitrary infinity. The Ego is, therefore, limited, because a Non- Ego is posited through it ; and is, at the same time, unlimited, because it posits the Non-Ego by its ideal activity throughout an infinity. The activity of the Ego, therefore, in this posit- ing and not-positing is a limiting through ideal (that is, free and unlimited) activity. Now let us determine this activity of positing and not-positing by its opposite; that is, by 2, posit- ed and not-posited. The activity of the Non-Ego is such a posited and not-posited. That activity is posited and not-posit- ed at the same time It is posited, for, if it were not posited by the Ego, there would be no limit j and it is at the same time not-posited, because the Ego constantly extends the limit, and thus cancels it. The limit is always posited by the Ego and the Non-Ego together, only by each in a different man- ner ; and therein they are opposites. In so far as the limit is posited by the Ego it is ideal ; and in so far as it is posited by the Non-Ego it is real ; THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 20J but is both in a synthetical unity. It is real only in so far as it is ideal ; or in so far as it is posited by the Ego ; it is ideal (that is, it can be extended by the Ego) only in so far as it is real ; or in so far as it is posited by the Non-Ego. Thus the activity of the Ego, which penetrates beyond the limit, becomes both real and ideal. It is real because it tends upon something posited by the real ; it is ideal, because it tends upon it by its own election. Thus the perceived becomes relatable to the Ego. The activity of the Non-Ego remains ex- cluded, for it is pushed together with the limit into the infinite ; but the product of this activity, the limitation in the Ego, as the condition of its ideal activity, becomes relatable to the Ego. But since that, to which the product of the Non- Ego becomes related, is the ideal activity of the Ego — the same activity which is to posit the relation — there is no distinction between the relating and that to which something is to be related. Hence, there is no relation at all with the Ego ; and the whole deduced occurrence is a contcviplation, in which the Ego loses itself in the object of its ac- tivity. The contemplated is an idealistically viewed product of the Non-Ego, which contemplation ex- tends into the infinite. And thus we obtain a sub- strate for the Non-Ego, as we before obtained one for the Ego. The contemplating is, of course, the Ego, which, however, does not reflect upon itself. Sensation was to be posited. We have seen both 208 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE, how the sensating and the object of sensation are posited through contemplation ; but, in order to have sensation posited, the sensating and the ob- ject of sensation must not be posited separately, but in synthetic unity. This is now our concluding task. In order to posit the Ego as limited, as sensating, we required an ideal activity, opposed to the limited activity. Again, in order to posit the object of sensation, which was beyond the limit, nevertheless within the sphere of the Ego, we required an acti- vity of the Ego, always removing the limit into an infinity. The synthetical union of both would sig- nify : The Ego, in order to be able to limit itself, must remove (extend) the limit ; and in order to remove the limit it must limit itself Thus sen- sation and contemplation would be synthetically united ; and in sensation, inner contemplation (the contemplation of the sensation) and outer con- templation (that of the object of sensation) would also be synthetically united ; and our task would be accomplished. 1st. The limited activity of the Ego is to be de- termined by its opposite, the ideal activity of the Ego. In so far, therefore, the ideal activity is the presupposition, the condition of a relation between the two activities — by no means the sequence of such a relation. If both are to be related, then the ideal activity is presupposed. The limited activity is limited, let us say, in C. Its opposite, therefore, the ideal activity, is charac- THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 209 terized by this, that it is not limited i7i C, (whether it be limited in another point is left, and must be left, undetermined.) Hence, the determined point C is in this relation related to the ideal activity ; and, since the latter is its presupposition, must be con- tained in it. The ideal activity is not originally directed upon C, but touches it in the relation by chance, as it vi^ere. As soon as the relation occurs, hov\^ever, the point C is posited wherever it occurs ; and there is no freedom in positing its place of oc- currence. This place is determined ; and only the express positing of the point as point is activity of the relation. Moreover, in the relation, this ideal activity is posited as going beyond this point C. This, again, is not possible, unless the point is po- sited in the ideal activity as a point, beyond which it goes. Hence, throughout all the extension of the activity, this point is carried over in it, as an ideal- istic point of limitation, wherewith to measure the distance, as it were, from the first fixed and im- movable point. But since the activity is to go be- yond, and never to be limited, this second ideal point is also not fixed, but always a moving one, and in such a manner that throughout the whole extension no point can (idealistically) be posited, which this point has not touched. As certain, therefore, as that ideal activity goes beyond the point of limitation, that point is carried out into the infinite, (until, perhaps, we shall touch a new limit.) Now, what activity carries the point thus beyond the ideal activity, or that of the relation } Evi- 210 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. dently, since for the ideal activity no such point ex- ists previous to the relation ; and since, on the other hand, the relation itself presupposes that carrying beyond, it must be thus : that in the very relation and through it the point of limitation as well as its carrying beyond are posited synthetically in it ; and since all relation is grounded in the Ego, this must also be done through ideal activity, but through another ideal activity than that which we know. We have thus the following three acts of the Ego : one, which has the ideal activity as its object ; another, which has the real and limited activity as its object ; and these two must be one and the same, though as yet we do not see how this can be ; and thirdly, an activity which carries the limit from the real into the ideal activity. By means of this latter, the ideal activity itself is dis- tinguished : firstly, as going merely to C, and thus far remaining altogether pure ; and, secondly, as going beyond C, and carrying forward the limit. 2d. But this solving the difficulty of positing the Ego as limited and unlimited together, by calling its limited activity real and the other ideal, will not suffice. For if you ask, again, what is its real ac- tivity, all you can say is, its limited activity, etc., and the explanation is a circle. We must have a different ground of distinction than that of limita- tion, or we have no explanation at all. Before finding this ground, let us premise what we shall discover as the final result ; that is, the Ego cannot posit xX.'s.qM for itself at all, unless it THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 211 limits itself, and hence unless it goes beyond it« self. Originally the Ego is posited through itself ; or, it is what it is, for any outside intelligence ; it is its own ground ; that is, thus it must be thought, if the Ego is thought. Moreover, it has a tendency (see the " Practical Part") to Jill 7ip and encircle the infinity ; or, to reflect upon itself as an infinite. But this mere tendency produces no act of the Ego. Now, posit it thus, tending toward C, and at that point checked — of course, for any possible outside intelligence, which observes the Ego, and which has posited that tendency in its own consciousness. What will thereby arise in the Ego .'' Evidently a tendency to reflect upon itself, which it could not do before, since all reflected must be limited, and the Ego before was not limited. In C Ethe go is limited ; hence, in C there arises in the Ego, together with the limitation, the reflec- tion upon itself; it returns into itself, finds itself, feels itself, but clearly nothing outside of itself This reflection of the Ego upon itself is, as we clearly see from our stand-point of an outside intel- ligence, an act of the Ego, grounded in the neces- sary tendency and the added condition. But what is this reflection for the Ego itself .-' Clearly : In this reflection it first finds itself; arises first/i^r it- self. It can not accept itself as the ground of something before it ever was ! Hence, that self- feeling, self-finding is for the Ego a mere passivity ; 212 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. it reflects not for itself, but is reflected by an outside something. We, the outside intelligence, saw it act, it is true ; but the Ego itself does not see itself act ; is purely passive. The Ego is now for itself, because, and in so far as it is limited, and being an Ego, it must posit itself as limited ; that is, must oppose to itself a limiting something. This is done by an activity, which goes beyond the limit C, and views the limit as an oppo- site to the Ego. This activity is altogether ground- ed in the Ego. The Ego posits a limiting something, because it is limited, and because it must posit what- ever it is. It posits it as a limiting something, and hence as an opposite and Non-Ego, because it is to explain its own limitation. Let no one, therefore, believe that we open here a way to penetrate into the thing per se ; that is, the thing without refe- rence to an Ego. Our presupposition was : the Ego is limited. You ask : Has this limitation in itself, that is, without reference to a possible intel- ligence, a ground, and how is this ground consti- tuted ? But how can you ask so } And how can I answer you rationally when you require me to abstract from all reason } For the Ego, (for rea- son,) tJiat limitation has a ground, since all limi- tation presupposes a limiting ; and for the Ego this ground is also not in the Ego, for then the Ego would be contradictory, but in an opposite ; and such an opposite is, therefore, posited as such by the Ego, according to those laws of reason, and is its product. THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 21 3 Let US repeat this : We say the Ego must be limited if it is to be an Ego ; and must, by the laws of its being, posit this limitation and its ground in a limiting something ; the latter is, therefore, its product. Now, if any body should be so thoroughly pene- trated with transcendent dogmatism that he can not yet tear himself from it, he might probably argue thus against us : " I admit all this ; but this merely explains the representation of the thing in the Ego, which certainly is its product, but not the thing itself which I want to know about. You say the Ego is limited. Very well. But this limita- tion, considered in itself, and abstracting altogether from its reflection through the Ego, must have a ground, and this ground is the thing in itself" To this argument we reply : You explain just like the Ego which we are considering ; and you are that Ego just as surely as you follow the laws of reason in your argument. If you will but reflect maturely upon this fact, you will see that you with your ar- gument remain, though unconsciously, in the same circle which we have just pointed out. You will never escape that circle, unless you can get beyond those laws of thinking. But when you do get be- yond them, you will cease to urge such objections. The Ego is, therefore, in this whole act utterly passive and unconscious of its activity ; wherefore, the product thereof, if it should appear to the Ego, will necessarily appear to it as existing indepen- dently of it. 214 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 3cl. The Ego has gone, for an outside observer, beyond C with the tendency to reflect upon itself. But as it can not reflect without being limited, it is clear that it must be again limited beyond C, say in the point D. The Ego also produced, for an out- side observer, a Non-Ego, but unconscious of its activity. Now, it reflects upon its product, and posits it as a Non-Ego, of course without further determination and without consciousness, contra- dictory as it may sound, since the Ego has not yet been reflected upon. This second product, a posited Non-Ego, must again be reflected upon. The Ego in sensating is posited as passive ; the opposite Non-Ego must be posited as active. This Non-Ego, posited as active, must again be reflected upon ; and now we enter the field of our investigation. Through the Ego and in the Ego, though with- out consciousness, as we have repeatedly said, an active Non-Ego is posited. This is reflected upon, or a new activity of the Ego is directed upon it. Reflection only tends upon a limited ; hence, the activity of the Non-Ego is necessarily limited, limit- ed as activity, not in its extent, as might be sup- posed, for as yet we have no space. The Non-Ego, therefore, is checked in its activity, becomes pas- sive ; the manifestation of its power is checked, and only a substrate of the power remains. In so far as the Ego reflects, it does not reflect upon this reflec- tion itself; hence, it does not become conscious of THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 215 its activity therein, and we thus again obtain the above external (though not yet posited as external) first original contemplation, which has neither con- sciousness, self-consciousness, nor even conscious- ness of the object. We are now at the same point from which we started in our second part of the theoretical part of the science of knowledge, that is, at the con- tradictory opposite activities of the Ego and the Non-Ego. We have seen that no activity of the Ego can be annihilated by the Non-Ego, unless the Ego proceeds from what we may describe as its original sphere, that is, the sphere between A and C, into the sphere of the Non-Ego, which extends from C into infinity. We have also seen that no activity of the Non-Ego is possible unless the Ego first posits the Non-Ego and its activity ; both are products of the Ego. But we have only seen this from the stand-point of an outside observer ; it re- mains that the Ego should see this for itself. How } The observer discovered an Ego as a something, and a Non-Ego also as a something, and a point of union between these two. The limitation of the Ego, however, did not apjDcar until the observer began to reflect upon the latter two ; by reflection he discovered this limitation and all the acts result- ing therefrom in the Ego. By virtue of these acts the Ego has now attained the same stand-point of reflection which the observer occupied. For it has been shown now that within the Ego itself, within 2l6 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. its own sphere of action, as heretofore posited for the observer — and as the product of the Ego itself there is another Ego, so to speak — an Ego percepti- ble because limited, and besides this Ego a Non- Ego, and a point of union between both. Hence, the Ego need only undertake the same reflection which the observer undertook, to discover the same. It is true the Ego has already reflected at the very commencement of its action. But that reflec- tion was necessary. The Ego had a tendency to reflect ; the limitation of the Ego came as the con- dition of the possibility of such reflecting, and hence the Ego reflected necessarily. From this necessary reflection arose sensation feeling, and all we have deduced. The tendency to reflect, however, still continuing in the Ego — because it extends into the infinite — the Ego can now reflect upon its first re- flecting, and all the consequences of that reflecting, since the condition of all reflection, limitation through something which may be regarded as a Non-Ego, exists. If the original reflection of the Ego, therefore, was necessary, its present reflecting is not so. For the condition of this present reflecting is not un- conditionally a Non-Ego, but may also be regarded as contained in the Ego. It is not limited by an absolute Non-Ego in this reflection, but by a Non- Ego which is its own production, and which hence may be regarded as such ; and thus the limitation, the condition of the reflection, may be taken away. But if what we have posited in the Ego really is THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 21/ in the Ego, then the Ego must reflect. Hence, we postulate the reflection. For example, many im- pressions may be made upon the Ego ; unless it reflects upon them, no impressions have been made upon the Ego. It may, and it may not, so reflect. At present we postulate it. Hence, the demanded reflection occurs now with absolute spontaneity ; the Ego reflects because it reflects. Thus, not only the tendency to reflect has its ground in the Ego, but even the act of re- flection ; to be sure, it is conditioned by a Non-Ego, by a received impression, but it is not necessitated thereby. In this self-reflection of the Ego there are two links, the reflected Ego and the reflecting Ego. Both will probably be united in a third, according to our synthetical method. 1st. The Ego we have hitherto been able only to characterize as feeling, as a feeling Ego and nothing else. The reflected Ego is limited means, there- fore, it feels itself limited, feels an outside compul- sion. Again, in so far as the Ego posits itself as limited, it goes beyond the limit, that is, it posits, at the same time, a Non-Ego, but without conscious- ness of its action. The feeling of compulsion is, therefore, united with a contemplation, but an unconscious contem- plation, of the Non-Ego. Both the itself-feeling Ego and the contemplated Non-Ego must be synthetically united ; this is done by the limit. The Ego, because it feels it- 2l8 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. self limited, posits the contemplated Non-Ego as the cause of its limitation, as the explanation of the feeling of compulsion. But the difficulty is, where does the original feel- ing of compulsion arise from ? To be sure, I ex- plain it by the Non-Ego, but the feeling precedes the contemplation of the Non-Ego. Hence, it must be explained independently of the Non-Ego. This question leads to our second, the antithesis. 2d. The act of the reflecting Ego we have cha- racterized as absolutely spontaneous, ideal activity of the Ego. As such it must be posited, that is, as going beyond the limit into the infinite. But to be reflected upon, it can not go into the infinite ; hence, in its going beyond the limit, it must nevertheless be limited. There must be a limitation conjointly with the unlimitedness. How .'' The activity can not be reflected as activity, (the Ego can never become immediately conscious of its activity,) but as siibstrate, that is, as product of an absolute activity of the Ego, a product contem- plated by the Ego without consciousness of the contemplation. Hence, in so far as the Ego re- flects upon the absolute spontaneity of its reflection in the first act, an unlimited product of the activity of the Ego, as such, is posited. This product, po- sited as product of the Ego, must be placed in rela- tion to the Ego, It can not be related to the contem- plating Ego, for this Ego has not yet been posited ; it must be related to the Ego which feels itself limited. But this latter Ego is opposed to that THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 21<^ Ego which produces through freedom an unhmited ; the Ego which feels itself limited is not free, but is under compulsion ; and the producing Ego is not compelled, but produces spontaneously. Thus, indeed, it must be, if relation and syn- thetical union is to be possible and necessary ; and we have only to find the ground of the relation. This ground must be activity with freedom, or absolute activity. But such an activity can not be predicated of the limited Ego ; hence, a union of both seems impossible. One step more, and we shall find the surprising result, putting an end to all old errors, and reinstat- ing reason for evermore in her eternal rights. The Ego is to be the relating. Hence, the EgO' necessarily, absolutely of itself, and against the out- ward ground of limitation, proceeds beyond itself, and thus appropriates the product which, through freedom, it makes its own product ; ground of re- lation and the relating link are the same. Of this act the Ego never becomes conscious, and never can become conscious ; its essence con- sists in absolute spontaneity, and, as soon as you reflect upon it, it ceases to be spontaneity. The Ego is only free in acting ; as soon as it reflects upon this act, it ceases to be free, and the act be- comes product. Frojn tJie impossibility of the cojiscionsness of a free act arises the tvhole distinction betiveen ideality and reality, between representation and the thing in itself. 220 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. Freedom, or, which is the same, the immediate acting of the Ego, is the uniting link of ideality and reality. The Ego is free in positing itself as free, in liberating itself; and it posits itself as free, or liberates itself in being free. Determinateness and being are one ; acting and product are one ; in de- termining itself to act, the Ego acts ; and in acting it determines itself The Ego can not posit itself in reflection as free, for this would be a contradiction which could never lead to freedom. But it appropriates something as product of its own free activity, and thus mediately posits itself free. 3d. The Ego is limited in feeling itself, and posits itself in so far as limited. This was our first state- ment. The Ego is free, and posits itself at least mediately as free, because it posits the limitation as product of its free activity. This was our second statement. Both statements, limitation in feeling and freedom in producing, are utterly opposites. They might be united by showing that the Ego could posit itself in different respects as free and limited. But our statements have distinctly assert- ed that the Ego is to posit itself as limited, because and in so far as it posits itself free, and vice versa. The Ego is to be free and limited in one and the same respect, and this is the contradic- tion which is to be solved in a third statement. Let us look at the two statements a little closer. THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 221 THESIS. 1st, The Ego is to posit itself as limited because and in so far as it posits itself as free ; or, the Ego is free only in so far as it acts. Now, What is act- ing ? What its distinction from not-acting ? All acting presupposes power. Absolute acting means, a power determining itself solely through and in itself, that is, giving itself a direction. Before, the power had no direction, was latent power, a mere tendency to apply power. The Ego, to posit itself as absolutely acting, must, therefore, in reflection, also be able to posit itself as not-acting. To deter- mine itself as acting presupposes rest. Again, the power gives itself a direction, that is, an object. Gives itself an object ; hence, it must have had the object before ; must have received the object passively. Hence, a self-determining to act on the part of the Ego presupposes passivity. New difficulties everywhere ! But from them the clearest light will be thrown upon a subject. ANTITHESIS, 2d. The Ego is to posit itself as free because and in so far as it posits itself as limited. The Ego posits itself as limited means, it posits a limit to its activity, (it does not produce this limit, but posits it as posited by an opposite power, a Non-Ego.) Hence, in order to be limited passively, the Ego must previously have acted ; its power must have 222 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. had a direction, and a self-determined direction. All limitation presupposes free activity. SYNTHESIS. 3d. The Ego is as yet for itself limited, necessi- tated, in so far as it goes beyond the limitation and posits a Non-Ego which it contemplates without self-consciousness. Now, this Non-Ego is, as we have seen from our higher stand-point, a product of the Ego, and the Ego must reflect upon it as its product. This reflection necessarily occurs through absolute self-activity. But the Ego, this very same activity, can not, at the same time, produce a Non-Ego and reflect upon it as its production. Hence, it must interrupt its first activity ; and must so interrupt it through absolute spontaneity. Only thus, indeed, is absolute spontaneity possible. For the Ego is to determine itself But the Ego is in essence nothing but activity. Hence, it must limit one of its acts ; and, because it is nothing but f activity, it must limit the act by another opposite act. Again, the Ego is to posit its product, the oppo- site Non-Ego as its product. Through the same act which interrupts the first one it thus posits the Non-Ego, and elevates it to a higher degree of re- flection. The lower, first region of reflection is thus broken off ; and all we have to do now is to seek the point of union of both forms of reflection. THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 223 But since the Ego is never immediately conscious of its acting, it can posit the product as its product only through a new reflection by mediation. Through this new reflection the product must be posited as product of absolute freedom, the distinc- tive characteristic whereof is, that it might be other- wise, or might be posited otherwise. Contemplation floats between several determinations, and posits amongst all possible determinations only one, where- by the product receives the peculiar character of an image. ^ In so far as the Ego posits this image as product of its activity, it necessarily opposes to it something which is not its product, which is no longer deter- minable, but perfectly determined, and thus deter- mined through itself, not through the Ego. This is the real thing by which the Ego is guided in * Let us exemplify this by an object with various characteristics. In the first contemplation, the productive contemplation, I am lost in an object. I reflect upon myself at first, find myself, and dis- tinguish myself from the object. But as yet all is mixed and con- fused in the object, and it is nothing further than an object. I then begin to reflect upon its several characteristics, for instance, its figure, color, etc., and posit them in my consciousness. At each separate characteristic of this kind, I am at first in doubt and hesi- tating. I then make some arbitrary scheme of a figure, color, etc., the basis of my observation, and now observe closer. And now I first begin to determine my scheme of the figure, perhaps as a cube, and my scheme of a color, perhaps as dark green. By this process of going from an undetermined product of free imagination to its complete determinateness in one and the same act, that which occurs in my consciousness becomes an image, and is posited as an imagCt It becomes my product, because I must posit it as determined through absolute self-activity. 224 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE, sketching its image, and which must, therefore, ne- cessarily appear to it in its imaging, (in its repre- sentation.) This real thing is the product of the interrupted act, but which can not now be possibly- posited as such product. The Ego images after this thing. Hence, the thing must be entertained in the Ego and accessi- ble to its activity ; or, in other words, we must be able to show a ground of relation between the thing and the image of the thing. Such a ground of re- lation is the perfectly determined but unconscious contemplation of the thing. For and in this con- templation all the characteristics of the thing are perfectly determined, and in so far it is related to the thing, and the Ego is passive in the contempla- tion. Still, it is also an act of the Ego, and, hence, relatable to the Ego, active in the imaging of this thing. The Ego has access to this contemplation and determines the image in accordance with the characteristics furnished in the contemplation. In other words, the Ego reviews spontaneously the several characteristics of the thing, enumerates them, and gives its attention to them. Or, this un- conscious contemplation is the ground of all har- mony we assume between our representations and the things, and explains the whole difficulty. In imaging, the Ego is perfectly free. The image is determined thus, because the Ego freely so determines it ; and this freedom makes the image relatable to the Ego, and capable of being posited in the Ego as its product. But the image is to be THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 22 5 not empty, but corresponding to a thing outside of the Ego ; hence, it must be relatable to this thing. The thing has become relatable to the Ego, as wg have seen, by means of a presupposed immediate unconscious contemplation thereof The image, to be related to the Ego, must be determined by the thing so as to be an exact counterpart of it, and this complete and same determination of image and thing is their ground of relation. There is no dis- tinction now at all between the image and the un- conscious contemplation of the thing. But this result is a contradiction of our formei statement, that nothing which is necessarily de- termined as such or such can be a product of the Ego. What in our former statement was a representa- tion, now becomes a thing per se, and the question still remains, whether there are only things and no representations, as the last result would imply, or representations and no real things, as our former statement asserted. A synthetic solution of these conflicting state- ments would assert : an image is not at all possible without a thing ; and a thing — at least for the Ego — is not possible without an image. The Ego is to relate the image to the thing. This relation, we must show, is not possible with- out presupposing the image as such, that is, as free product of the Ego. In other words, the thing is not possible without the image. Again, the Ego is to construct the image with 226 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. freedom. It must be shown that this is not possi- ble without presupposing the thing ; or, that the image is not possible without the thing, of course, for the Ego. 1st. The Ego is to relate the image to the thing. As this act of the Ego does not occur in immediate consciousness, it is difficult to see how a distinction can be posited between the image and the thing, unless the Ego occurs mediately in consciousness, that is, unless the object (or unconscious produc- tion) of the activity of the Ego (the thing) is posited as product of freedom, that is, as accidental, as a thus which could be otherwise. The thing is thus posited as accidental, in so far as the perfectly determined image is related to it. The perfectly determined image, for instance, or quality, is the red color. This is to be related to a thing by an absolute act of the Ego. The thing is to be determined by the image. Hence, the thing must be posited before this relation, and independently of it, as such, which may be, or may not be, thus determined ; and is only thus posited as accidentally determined in consequence of the act of relation. Hence, the thing discovers itself, since its quality is altogether accidental, as presup- posed product of the Ego, which has no predicate but that of being. The free act, and the necessity that such a free act should occur, is the only ground for proceeding from the undetermined to the de- termined, and vice versa. THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 22/ ANOTHER ILLUSTRATION OF THIS POINT. You say A is red. A, the first posited, is posited as, firstly, completely determined by itself. A is A, and nothing else. Now, you add and say, A is red. Red is also completely determined, it is what it is, and nothing else. Now, you join both togeth- er. What was A, as far as redness is concerned, before this joining .'' Evidently altogether undeter- mined. You might have predicated any color of it. It is the joining, expressed by the copula is, which makes the undetermined determined, which negates all other determinations but the one stated. If A had been previously determined, you could not have made an assertion of it. Result : If the reality of the thing (as snbstatice) is presupposed, the quality thereof is posited as acci- dental, and hence the tiling is mediately posited as product of the Ego. It is the quality of the thing to which we relate the Ego. 2d. The Ego is to construct the image with per- fect freedom. In so far as it does this, floating be- tween many possible determinations of the thing and choosing one, the Ego mediately posits itself as Ego, and limits itself. The image is not yet de- termined, but it is being determined ; the Ego is in the act of determining. We will call this its condi- tion, A. (It is the inner contemplation of the Ego in constructing.) In so far as the Ego acts, it posits over and 228 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE, against this free floating image, and mediately against itself, the imaging, the perfectly determined quality, of which we have said above that it is taken up and seized by the Ego, by means of the im- mediate but unconscious contemplation of the thing. This determined quality is posited as opposite, hence as excluded from the Ego. We will call it B. If A is totality, B is excluded from it ; but, if B is posited, A is excluded from the totality. For the Ego posits the quality as determined, and must do so if it is to posit itself as free in the imaging. The Ego must, therefore, reflect on this determina- tion of the quality ; and by this the Ego is excluded from the totality ; that is, it is no longer self-suffi- cient, no longer through itself, but through another and an opposite ; that is, its condition, its reflection, the image within it, can no longer be explained altogether out of itself, but only by an external other. Hence, we have A + B, or A determined by B as totality. (External, determined, ptire con- templation.) The reflection must turn upon A + B in this their connection, that is, it must turn upon the quality, as a determined, particular quality, if the quality is to be in the Ego, or in consciousness. This reflection occurs, of course, like every reflec- tion, through absolute spontaneity ; the Ego reflects because it is Ego. It does not become conscious of this spontaneity ; but the object of its reflection. as such, becomes product of this spontaneity, and THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 229 must, therefore, bear the character of a product of a free act, that is, accidentalncss. But it can not be accidental in the same manner in which it is posit- ed as detcniiined, hence it must be so in another respect. We shall soon see how. This accidental character makes it a product of the Ego ; the Ego, therefore, determines itself again, and this it can not do without opposing to itself something, that is, a Non-Ego. REMARK. (The Ego reflects with freedom, an act of deter- mining which, by its very nature, becomes itself determined ; but it can not reflect or posit a limit without, at the same time, absolutely producing something as that which forms the limit. Detcr- inining and producing, therefore, always go toge- ther ; and it is this which keeps up the identity of consciousness.) This something, opposed to the Ego, is necessary in relation to the determined quality ; and this quali- ty is accidcjital in relation to the something. Again, this something, like the quality, is opposed to the Ego, and hence, like it, is a Non-Ego, but a neces- sary Non-Ego. But the quality, as determined, as something against which the Ego is merely passive, we have seen, must be excluded from the Ego ; and the Ego, when reflecting upon it as so determined, must thus exclude it. 230 rilE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. Now, we have just found another Non-Ego, which the Ego, in reflecting, excludes as determined and necessary. Both, therefore, must be placed in rela- tion to each other and be synthetically united. Their ground of union is that both are Non-Ego, and hence, in relation to the Ego, both are one and the same ; their ground of distinction is, that the quality is accidental, might be otherwise ; but the substrate, as such, is necessary in relation to the quality. The quality must have a substrate, but the substrate must not necessarily have this particular quality. Such a relation of the accidental to the necessary in their synthetical union is called the relation of substantiality. The reflection must turn upon the excluded B, the necessary Non-Ego. From this reflection it follows that A -f B, which was heretofore posited as totality, can no longer be totality, that is, can no longer be the only contents of the Ego, and hence accidental. It must be determined by the necessary B. The formula now is, A -f B determined by B. First of all, the quality, the image, or whatever you choose to call it, must be thus determined by the necessary Non-Ego. This quality was posited as accidental, the thing as necessary ; both, there- fore, as opposites. Now, in the reflection of the Ego, they must be united in the same Ego. This is done by absolute spontaneity. The union is al- together product of the Ego. The union is posited means, a product is posited through the Ego. The Ego, however, is never immediately conscious of its THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 23 I acting, but only in and ])y means of the product. The union of both must, therefore, be posited as acci- dental ; and since all accidental is posited as arising through acting, it follows that the union itself must be posited as having arisen through acting. But that which, in its existence, is itself accidental and dependent, can not be posited as acting ; hence, only the necessary can be thus posited. Hence, in the reflection, and by means of it, the conception of acting is transferred to the necessary, though in reality this conception lies only in the reflecting, and the accidental is posited as product thereof, as expression of the free activity of the necessary. Such a synthetical relation is called the relation of causality, and the thing, viewed in this synthetic union of the necessary and the accidental in it, is the real tJting* * We append at this important point the following remarks : 1. The just discovered act of the Ego is evidently an act through the power of imagination in contemplation ; for, firstly, the Ego unites opposites in it, which is the business of imagination ; and, secondly, it loses itself in this act, and transfers what is in it upon the object of its activity, which is the characteristic of contempla- tion. 2. The so-called category of causality shows itself here, therefore, as having its origin only in the power of imagination, and thus it is indeed ; nothing can get into the understanding except through the power of imagination. What alteration the understanding may make of this product of the imagination can here already be fore- seen. We have posited the thing as acting y/vt' without any rule, (and until the understanding comprehends its own manner of acting it is thus posited in consciousness as fate,) because the power of imagination transfers to it its own free acting. The sequence of a law is wanting. Whenever understanding sliall be directed upon 232 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. That which we have called expression of the ac- tivity of the thing, and which we found perfectly determined, is posited in the Ego, and is determined the thing so as to comprehend it according to law, then the thing will also appear as working in obedience to those laws. 3. Kant, who causes the categories to be originally generated as forms of thinking, and who, from his point of view, is very correct in this, stands in need of the schemes sketched by the understand- ing in order to make possible their application to the objects ; hence, he does as we do, and makes them accessible to the working of the imagination. In the science of knowledge these categories arise in imagination itself, at the same time and together with the objects, and in order to make these first possible. 4. Maimon views the category of causality in the same manner as the science of knowledge ; only he calls this procedure of the human mind a deception. But we have seen that that can not be called deception which is proper and necessary by virtue of the laws of a rational being, and which can not be avoided unless we wish to cease being rational beings. But the real point of dispute lies here. Maimon would say : " Supposing, as I admit, that your laws of thinking are d, priori, then you can certainly apply them to objects only by the power of imagination ; and hence, in applying them, object and law must be, at the same time, in imagination. But how do you get the object ?" The answer is. Imagination itself must pro- duce the object. If you assert the object to be produced in any other manner, you become a transcendent dogmatist, and utterly removed from critical philosophy. 5. Maimon has only doubted the applicability of the law of causality, but he might as well have doubted all h priori laws. This Hume does. He says : " It is your self who transfer the con- ception of causality which you have in you to the external things, jmd hence your knowledge has no objective validity." Kant admits the first part of the sentence not only with respect to the law of causality, but for all h priori laws ; but he rejects the conclusion by pro\'ing that an object is only possible for a subject. Maimon says, it is only by imagination that you apply the law of causality to objects ; hence your knowledge has no objective validity, and it is a mere deception if you apply your laws of thinking to objects. The science of knowledge admits the premise not only for the law of THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 233 for the Ego, as we have also seen. Hence, the Ego mediately is determined by the thing, and thus, ceasing to be Ego, becomes itself product of the Non-Ego, because that which fills it is product of the Non-Ego or of the thing. The thing, by means of this its expression, works even upon the Ego, and the Ego is no longer posited through itself, but posited in this its determination through the thing, (This is the famous influence of the thing upon the Ego, or the physical influence of the Locke school and of the new eclecticians, who, from the utterly heterogeneous components of the Leibnitz and the Locke systems, have composed an unconnected whole, the true statement of which we have just now attempted, but which has truth also only in this transitory connection.) But the Ego can not be Ego and product of the Non-Ego. Such, however, was the result of our formula: A -|- B determined by B. Hence, this formula must be again posited in the Ego, or must be again determined by A. A, that is, the effect which was said to have been produced in the Ego by the thing, is posited with respect to the Ego as accidental. Hence, there is necessarily opposed to this effect and to the Ego, in so far as it is determined thereby, an indepen- dent in itself and through itself existing Ego. Just as we opposed to the accidental in the Non-Ego causality, but for all ci priori laws, but shows by a closer determina- tion of the object that our knowledge has objective validity for that very reason, and can only have it on that condition. 2S4 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. the necessary thing, so we now oppose to the acci- dental in the Ego the necessary or the Ego per se ; and this latter, like the necessary Non-Ego, is pro- duct of the Ego itself. The necessary is substance ; the accidental an accidence of it. Both must be synthetically united as one and the same Ego. But since they are absolute opposites, they can only be united by absolute activity of the Ego, whereof the Ego never becomes immediately con- scious, but rather applies it to the objects of the reflection, thus positing the relation of causality between the two. In the reflection the accidental becomes effect of the activity of the absolute Ego and hence something real for the Ego, its utter- ance. That it is effect of the Non-Ego is altogether lost sight of in this reflection, since it can not be posited at the same time as effect of the Ego and of the Non-Ego. Thus, the thing and its utter- ance are completely excluded from the Ego and opposed to it. Both the Ego and the Non-Ego exist in them- selves necessary, and both completely independent of each other ; both utter themselves in this inde- pendence, each by its own activity and power, which power, however, is as yet perfectly free. We have now shown how we came to oppose an acting Ego and an acting Non-Ego, and to consider both as completely independent of each other. In our present view the Non-Ego exists because it exists, and is altogether determined through itself; but that it is imaged, represented by the Ego, is acci- • THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 235 dental for the Non-Ego. Again, the Ego acts ab- solutely through itself ; but that it images the Non- Ego is accidental for it. The utterance of the thing in its appearance is product of the thing ; but the appearance, in so far as it exists for the Ego, is again product of the Ego. The Ego can not act without having an object ; hence, the acting of the Ego posits that of the Non- Ego. Again, the Non-Ego can not act, that is, for the Ego, unless the acting of the Ego is preposited. The utterance of both powers is, therefore, neces- sarily synthetically united, and we must now show the ground of their union, their harmony. This union occurs through absolute spontaneity. But what is posited through freedom has the cha- racter of the accidental ; hence, the present syn- thetical union must have this character. It is, therefore, the accidental unity of the acting we have to examine, or the accidental junction of the acting of the Ego, and of the acting of the Non- Ego in a third, which is and can be nothing but their junction, and which we shall call for the present a point. TIME AND SPACE. Contemplation is detcrinined in time, and the con- templated in space. We have determined contemplation, in our last paragraph, as the synthetical union of the acting of the Ego and of the acting of the Non-EG:o throu2:h 2^6 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. their accidental junction in a point. This contem- plation occurs in the Ego means, it is posited as acci- dental. The contemplation X is posited as contem- plation accidental means, another contemplation — not another object, determination, or any such thing, "but — another co7itemplation, which we shall call Y, is ■opposed to it. Y is necessary when opposed to X, and X is accidental in opposition to Y. Y is, therefore, completely excluded from the Ego, which rests in the contemplation of X. X, as contemplation, necessarily rests in a point. So does Y, but in an opposite, distinct point. One point is not the other. The question is now. What necessity is it which Y has in relation to X, and what accidentalness which X has in relation to Y .'' Clearly, the con- templation Y and its point are necessarily syntheti- cally united if X is to be united with its point, or the union of X and its point presupposes that of Y .and its point, but not vice versa. In that point wherein X is posited another contemplation might be posited ; at least, so the Ego judges ; but in the point of Y none but Y can be posited, if X is to be posited as contemplation of the Ego. Only in so far as the accidentalness of this synthesis is posited, is X to be posited as contemplation of the Ego ; .and only in so far as to this accidentalness is op- posed the necessity of the same synthesis is the accidentalness itself to be posited. The much more difficult question remains, how the points X and Y are to be otherwise determined THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 237 than through the respective contemplations X and Y. As yet they are only points wherein a causal- ity of the Ego and the Non-Ego meet. It is, how- ever, clear that, if X is to be posited as the point wherein another contemplation may be posited, and Y as its opposite in which no other can be posited, both points dirempt from their contemplations, and must be distinguishable from each other. We can not yet see how this is possible, but we can see tJiat it must be possible if ever a contemplation is to be ascribed to the Ego. 1st. We have shown before that, if A is posited as totality, B is excluded. If A signifies the image to Tdc determined spontaneously, B signifies the inde- pendent and necessary quality of the image. We now apply this here. — From the contemplation X, as such, the determined object X is excluded ; and the same in the contemplation Y. Both objects, as such, are determined ; that is, the Ego in contem- plation must posit them exactly as it posits them. This, their determinateness, is to remain, of course. But the same relation which exists between the contemplations must exist between the objects. Hence, the object X is accidental in reference to Y, but Y necessary in reference to X. The deter- mination of X necessarily presupposes that of the Y, but not vice versa. But since both objects, ^j- objects of contemplatiouy are perfectly determined, their postulated relation can have no reference to this determinateness, but must refer to another as yet unknown determinate- 238 THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. ness, one through which something does not be- come an object generally, but an object of a con- templation distinguishable from another contempla- tion. The required determination does not belong to the inner determinations of the object, (in so far as it is A = A,) but is an external one. Unless we have the required distinction, a contemplation can not be posited in the Ego. The distinction, however, is not possible without this external de- terminateness of the object, and the object can not be an object of contemplation without this determi- nateness. It is, therefore, the exclusive condition of all contemplation. We call this unknown some- what through which the object is to be determined O ; the way in which Y is determined through it,. we call Z ; and the way in which X is determined through it, V. The mutual relation is, therefore, as follows : X must be posited as to be or not to be synthetically united with V, and hence V also as to be united thus with X or with any other object ; but Y must be posited as necessarily in synthetical union with Z, if X is to be united with V. If N \'s> posited as to be united with X, or as not to be united with X, Y is posited necessarily as united with Z. From this it results that every pos- sible object may be united with V except Y, for Y is already inseparably united. Thus, also, may X be united with every possible O, except with Z, for this is inseparably united with Y. X and Y are both completely excluded from the THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 2J9 Ego ; the Ego loses and forgets itself completel_y in their contemplation. The relation we have here shown up is, therefore, to be ascribed to the things tJiemselves ; the relation appears to the Ego as not dependent upon its freedom, but as determined through the things. The relation was: because Z is united with Y, X is excluded from it. It must, therefore, applied to the things, be expressed thus : Y excludes X from Z ; Y determines X negatively. If Y extends to the point d, X goes to this point ; if it only extends to c, X goes to c. But since the only ground why X can not be united to Z is this, that Y excludes it, X certainly begins where Y ceases to exclude it ; hence, continuity belongs to both. This exclusion, this continuity is not possible imless X and Y are both in a common sphere, (which we do not know as yet,) and meet in one point in this sphere. The positing of this sphere constitutes the synthetic union of both as required. Hence, such a common sphere is produced by the absolute spontaneity of the power of imagination. 2d. We have shown before that, if the excluded B is reflected upon, A is thereby excluded from the to- tality, from the Ego. But since B has been posited in the Ego by reflection, and is, therefore, itself posited in union with A as totality, (as accidental,) it follows that another B, in reference to which it is accidental, must be excluded or posited as a neces- sary opposite. We now apply this here. Y is now, with reference to its synthetical union 240 THE SCIENCE OF t^iVOWLEDGE. with an unknown O, determined ; and X in respect to, and by means of, Y, is also at least negavtiely determined. But if they are to be united with A, or to be po- sited in the Ego, they must be posited as accidejital also in this respect, that is, a necessary X and Y must be opposed to them, in regard to which they are accidental : substances whereof they are acci- dences. This necessary X and Y, whereof the accidental X and Y in the Ego are the utterances, are their presupposed powers, free powers. The same rela- tion which exists between X and Y as utterances exists, therefore, between these powers. The ut- terance of power Y is utterly independent of that of power X ; but the latter in its utterance is de- pendent upon and conditioned by Y. Conditioned, that is, the utterance of Y does not determine the utterance X positively, but negatively ; not the qua- litativeness of X, but in this that X can not utter itself in a certain manner. But it has been expressly stated that X as well as Y are to utter themselves through free, unlimited causality. How, then, can X be conditioned by Y .'' Evidently X has causality as well as Y, and the causality of the latter is not the condition of that of the former ; Y does not compel or urge X to utter itself Nor does it determine the character of this, the utterance or causality of X. But how, then, does it condition it t X and Y are to be in a synthetical relation to an THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 241 unknown O. For in and only through their rela- tion to O are they mutually related. Each must, therefore, have an independent relation to O, O must be a something which leaves to both per- fect freedom of causality, for in this, their free cau- sality, are they to be united with O. And since the resistance of every power to a causality limits that causality, O can have no power, no activity, no intension. It can, therefore, have no reality at all, and is nothing. We have seen how Y and Z being synthetically united, X is excluded from Z. We have also seen, now, that this synthetical union of Y and Z is ef- fected through the own free causality of the inner power Y. Not that Z is product of the power Y, but, being necessarily united with Y, it must also have a distinctive feature. Now, this union of Y and Z excludes the causality of X and its product from Z ; hence, Z is the sphere of causality of Y, 2in