my soul which directs me to something beyond mere presentation and knowledge?
There is within me an impulse to absolute, independent self-activity. Nothing is more insupportable to me, than to be merely by another, for another, and through another; I must be something for myself and by myself alone. This impulse I feel along with the perception of my own existence, it is inseparably united to my consciousness of myself.
I explain this feeling to myself, by reflection; and add to this blind impulse the power of sight, by thought. According to this impulse I must act as an absolutely independent being:—thus I understand and translate the impulse. I must be independent. Who am I? Subject and object in one,—the conscious being and that of which I am conscious, gifted with intuitive knowledge and myself revealed in that intuition, the thinking mind and myself the object of the thought—inseparable, and ever present to each other. As both, must I be what I am, absolutely by myself alone;—by myself originate conceptions,—by myself produce a condition of things lying beyond these conceptions. But how is the latter possible? To nothing I cannot unite any being whatever; from nothing there can never arise something; my objective thought is necessarily mediative only. But any being which is united to another being, does thereby, by means of this other being, become dependent;—it is no longer a primary, original, and genetic, but only a secondary and derived being. I am constrained to unite myself to something;—to another being I cannot unite myself, without losing that independence which is the condition of my own existence.
