but a product of my own thought, something which is so conceived of by me only because I am compelled to imagine its existence by virtue of a law to me wholly inconceivable, proceeding from nothing and tending to nothing.
Spirit. It is possible.
I. Thou becomest timid and wavering. It is not possible only: it is necessary, according to these principles.
This perceiving, thinking, willing, intelligent entity, or whatever else thou mayest name that which possesses the faculties of perception, thought, and so forth;—that in which these faculties inhere, or in whatever other way thou mayest express this thought;—how do I attain a knowledge of it? Am I immediately conscious of it? How can I be? It is only of actual and specific acts of perception, thought, will, &c., as of particular occurrences, that I am immediately conscious; not of the capacities through which they are performed, and still less of a being in whom these capacities inhere. I perceive, directly and intuitively, this specific thought which occupies me during the present moment, and other specific thoughts in other moments; and here this inward intellectual intuition, this immediate consciousness, ends. This inward, intuitive thought, now becomes itself an object of thought; but according to the laws under which alone I can think, it seems to me imperfect and incomplete, just as formerly the thought of my sensible states was but an imperfect thought. As formerly to mere passivity I unconsciously superadded in thought an active element, so here to my determinate state (my actual thought or will) I superadd a determinable element (an infinite,
