tion concerning the objectivity is grounded on the very curious presupposition that the Ego is something else than its own thought of itself, and that something else than this thought and outside of it—God may know what they do mean!—is again the ground of it, concerning the actual nature of which outside something they are very much troubled. Hence, if they ask for such an objective validity of the thought, or for a connection between this object and the subject, I cheerfully confess that the Science of Knowledge can give them no instruction concerning it. If they choose to, they may themselves enter, in this or any other case, upon the discovery of such a connection, until they, perhaps, will recollect that this Unknown which they are hunting is, after all, again their thought, and that whatsoever they may invent as its ground will also be their thought, and thus ad infinitum; and that, indeed, they cannot speak of or question about anything without at the same time thinking it.
Now, in this act, which is arbitrary and in time for the philosopher as such, but which is for the Ego—which he constructs, by virtue of his just deduced right, for the sake of subsequent observations and conclusions—necessarily and originally; in this act, I say, the philosopher looks at himself, and immediately contemplates his own acting; he knows what he does, because he does it. Does a consciousness thereof arise in him? Without doubt; for he not only contemplates, but comprehends also. He comprehends his act as an acting generally, of which he has already a conception by virtue of his previous experience; and as this determined, into itself returning acting, as which he contemplates it in himself. By this characteristic determination he elevates it above the sphere of general acting.
What acting may be, can only be contemplated, not developed from and through conceptions; but that which this contemplation contains is comprehended by the mere opposition of pure being. Acting is not being, and being is not acting. Mere conception affords no other determination for each link; their real essence is only discovered in contemplation.
Now this whole procedure of the philosopher appears to me, at least, very possible, very easy, and even natural; and I can scarcely conceive how it can appear otherwise to my readers, and how they can see in it anything mysterious and marvellous. Every one, let us hope, can think himself. He will also, let us hope, learn that by being required to thus think himself, he is required to perform an act dependent upon his own activity, an internal act; and that if he realizes this demand, if he really affects himself through self-activity, he also most surely acts thus. Let us further hope that he will be able to distinguish this kind of acting from its opposite, the acting whereby he thinks external objects, and that he will find in the latter sort of thinking the thinking and the thought to be opposites (the activity, therefore, tending upon something distinct from itself), while in the former thinking both were one and the same (and hence the activity a return into itself). He will comprehend, it is to be hoped, that—since the thought of himself arises only in this manner (an opposite thinking producing a quite different thought)—the thought of himself is nothing but the thought of this act, and the word Ego nothing but the designation of this act—that Ego and an into itself returning activity are completely identical conceptions. He will understand, let us hope, that if he but for the present problematically presupposes with transcendental Idealism that all consciousness rests upon and is dependent upon self-consciousness, he must also think that return into itself as preceding and conditioning all other acts of consciousness; indeed, as the primary act of the subject; and, since there is nothing for him which is not in his consciousness, and since everything else in his consciousness is conditioned by this act, and therefore cannot condition the act in
