Johann Gottlieb Fichte

“ Thus the freedom of imagination is actually a real liberation of spiritual life. For, while we wake, our external sense is still determined and affected by that power which as yet is to us unknown; and it is only imagination which lifts us above this affection through the senses, and makes us capable of withdrawing ourselves from its influences by withdrawing our perception and surrendering ourselves exclusively to the productions of the imagination, thus freely creating an entirely different sequence of time, which has no connection whatever with the time-sequence' of sensuous development. ”

“ But in the same undivided life-moment there has arisen for it a knowledge of itself as a principle, and thus the knowledge of a principle joins together with the knowledge of knowledge into a substantial body of knowledge, a knowing one who is one and the same with the principle; in short, an Ego. I, the knowing, am at the same time the principle which has been liberated from immediate causality. The consciousness, I, starts from a reflection of knowledge and proceeds to that knowledge as a principle ”

“ I have described external perception as a condition wherein consciousness has causality through its mere existence, and the new character added to it by reflection as a power to check that outflowing of causality, and constitute life a principle through a possible free deed. As an illustration of the first condition, I have pointed to the child in the first moments of its life. In grown-up men such condition should never arise again, nor ever be observed by him in himself. ”

“ The picture of time came of itself and joined itself of its own accord to that picture of the principle as soon as we tried to form the latter. Hence we mast express it thus: time is a law of that picturing which we are trying to discover, and its peculiar character as such law is this, that it does not confine and enchain us unseen and unconsciously—as the laws of thinking very often do—but that, while it binds us, it also represents itself to us in an image or picture. We must, therefore, furthermore try to explain this consciousness of time which enters our mind of its own accord. ”

“ The contemplating faculty cannot contemplate its infinite faculty without feeling at the same time its external sense limited in a certain manner; and immediately with this consciousness of its own condition there connects a thinking, intimately united with that consciousness to one life-moment; whereby that which before was in us for our contemplation now becomes a body externally existing and endowed with a certain sensible quality. ”

“ Evidently the power of imagination must be able to reawaken perception in its determined parts. By directing its attention to the important point imagination must be able to reproduce absolutely this point if it so chooses, and to reproduce it exactly as it was in the previous perception. Thus we arrive at another causality of imagination, through its mere being, than the one described above as occurring in a diseased condition of the Ego. And so it is in fact, as everyone can discover by observing himself. ”

“ All being of a determined freedom results in a determined knowledge; hence, now that life has made itself a principle, there arises necessarily an immediate consciousness of itself as such a principle. ”

“ In external perception, the altogether simple consciousness—which in no manner rises above itself, or reflects upon itself and the life whereof is therefore not in the least more developed than is necessary to constitute it consciousness—is confined to a determined imaging of its sensation. That freedom which it needs, to bear but the form of knowledge, it receives through the objectivating thinking, which lifts consciousness, though confined to a determined imaging, at least beyond its mere being and frees it therefrom. ”

“ We here learn also what logic holds to be thinking; namely, the free constructing according to such a rule. The science of Logic, therefore, begins within the sphere of the already acquired free imagination and ignores the real basis of all consciousness. Logic holds that to think is the same as to imagine something, and—since there is not even a prototype of external perception as a guidance—to imagine something voluntarily ”

“ Firstly, there is as the ground of this newly-arisen consciousness of the image a real self-liberating, a self-liberating on the part of the life of knowledge itself. The determined consciousness, here of the image as the being of a determined freedom, is nothing but the result of the tearing itself loose from its chains on the part of free life, is simply the result of this determined higher life-development on the part of freedom itself. That standing and permanent being of freedom, which now is consciousness, is absolutely created through freedom. ”

“ This, then, is the true power of recollection; a power which each one possesses in the same manner, and which each one can raise to a ready art in his mind by his own freedom. A particular favoritism of nature, talent, or genius, or whatever it may be called, has no influence upon it. ”

“ II. Here already it appears clearly that consciousness is not a mere dead and passive mirror of external objects, but in itself living and productive. Imagine a quiet sheet of water wherein the trees and plants of the shore mirror themselves, and give to this sheet of water even the power to behold the pictures imaged in it and to become conscious of them; and it is easy enough to understand how the water can arise to a consciousness of an image or shadow in it ”

“ It is to be observed, moreover, that we have now discovered two utterly distinct acts of thinking as facts of consciousness. For, we either retain the qualities, simply forming them through thinking, and this is a thinking according to the form of substantiality, wherein we have a substance with its accidences; or we proceed altogether beyond the accidences and do not retain them at all, in which case we think a principle, or ground, or the relation of causality. ”

“ For thinking is precisely the expression used for a going beyond and out of mere self-consciousness, and we particularly request every one to comprehend this distinction. But that there really is involved such a going beyond even in the mere external perception is an immediate fact, since we do really assume a Something independent of us and existing outside of us, instead of the simple perception of a limitation of our external sense, &c., which alone we perceive,—a fact which each one may verify in his own consciousness. ”

“ We have already spoken before of a development and confinedness of a freedom through which alone the various fundamental forms of consciousness can arise, but had then good reasons to suppose that this sort of development had its determined terminus a quo and ad quem, and that it formed a circumscribed sphere, and that, therefore, the principle was finite in relation to it. But now we speak of a development through an infinite principle; hence we may expect that freedom must here be thought by us under another determination ”

“ In whatever branch of knowledge consciousness is most practised and accomplished, the power of recollection is also strongest. The practised philosopher, for instance, will find it very easy to restore the links of a series of thoughts, and to recollect the connections and the transitions of his argument; whereas he may have a very weak power of recollection for dates and names, since the worlds of dates and names are to him without any connection of thinking. ”

“ Nevertheless the science of Knowledge has hitherto been generally understood as asserting the very reverse of what I have just now stated. Now it is certainly true that the Science of Knowledge has said, and will ever say, and says to yon now, that the Ego posits absolutely itself as well as in itself the object. But in saying this it does not speak at all of the empirical Ego, but of an Ego which is altogether concealed to ordinary eyes, cannot be found at all within the sphere of facts, and can be recognized only by a rising to the fundamental ground. ”

“ But which, amongst the many qualities of perception, is the power of imagination to behold, in the image? Here we arrive at the external substance of the rule: the power of imagination is to be guided by the prototype of external perception. ”

“ Now, if these changing conditions were merely external perceptions for the individual who experiences them, then that consciousness of an Ego would be simply the consciousness of an Ego as an intelligence, or as a knowing Ego, but not of an Ego as a principle; and in this intelligence, or knowing Ego—since in its existence it is dependent upon the givenness of outer objects—having no guarantees of infinity and self-sufficiency, the time arising for it would not be infinite, but simply indefinite. ”

“ If the life of consciousness is altogether free, as we have seen it to be, that external perception could surely have entered it only through its own freedom, and thus it seems that the image in external perception must also be always recognized as an image created by freedom. ”

“ Such a consciousness would have neither time nor time-moments. Now if this is not to be thus, consciousness or the Ego must immediately in every such condition grasp it as the necessary part of a whole; must be compelled to connect immediately with the consciousness of the part the consciousness of the whole; must find it impossible to remain in the part, and impelled to proceed from it to the whole. But this whole, which embraces everything, is knowledge. Hence the Ego must be compelled to grasp or comprehend those other parts of the whole as also knowledge, though a different knowledge ”

“ Now this Ego, thus first created through the free development of life and entering consciousness, can either remain in this checkedness of its life-development, or surrender itself unto a free constructing of the power of imagination, or surrender itself to external perception. ”

“ A free and able man has no room for notions in his consciousness, but gives unto his consciousness direction and contents with perfect freedom so long as he wakes and has power. Nevertheless we ought to explain the nature of these notions and their relation to memory. The explanation is this: such a notion is the immediate causality of the power of imagination— which cannot be inactive even though its free master rests—all through itself, and is here, more specially, the reproduction of an actually experienced condition of life ”

“ The essence of all science consists in this: that we proceed from something sensuously perceived to its supersensuous ground. It is precisely so with philosophy. Philosophy starts from the perception of knowledge through the inner sense and proceeds to its ground. ”

“ The Ego has been posited absolutely through thinking; it exists absolutely independent of its own self-contemplation, and exists thus as free principle in the manner in which we have determined this conception above.
I add now: a principle is necessarily infinite. For if it ever ceased to be principle, and after any possible series of manifestations were finally to vanish altogether in some last one, it would not have been absolutely posited as principle, nor would being principle have constituted its real essence ”

“ Is it not necessary to assume that in going from any possible point which you may choose in the line A—B to any other possible point, you will meet the same infinity, so that you cannot absolutely go from one point to another without actually realizing that infinity? Hence you must acknowledge that that which seems to the conception utterly impossible and contradictory is actually realized in the contemplation of space. ”

“ Thus every science—for instance, natural science—possesses its whole world as its property, and must so possess it, in order to be able to subject at any moment each part thereof to its investigation. Thus we must make also our own world, the inner world of consciousness, our free property, and we are just now, in the present course of lectures, engaged upon this task, without however being able as yet to give an account of our proceeding, precisely because we are still engaged in the task. ”

“ And now I would ask anyone to tell me what that being, substance, or bearer of the qualities (accidences) is in-and-for-itself, or whether he has a single word wherewith to characterize it as such being, or whether, if he casts aside this merely formal being, he retains anything else than the qualities. Hence that being or substance (the thing per se) is nothing at all in itself, but is merely the accidences in the form of thinking. That bearer is nothing but the eternal being-born by the eternal and universal thinking of the accidences. ”

“ I. The proposition, that the object—for there is only one object, since the asserted existence of something external and independent of us, which constitutes the real character of an object, belongs to all objects in the same manner—is neither felt in sensation, nor beheld in contemplation, but altogether and solely thought, is as important as it has never yet been recognized. ”

“ But since an image of a quality is not possible without a previous actual affection through the external sense, and since a good supply is necessary for a free oppositing of many such images, it follows that life must have existed in a condition of mere perception for some length of time in order to be able to rise to such a freedom of imagination. ”