Johann Gottlieb Fichte

“ In this manner, if a man has but an ordinary, healthy understanding, his knowledge will become clearer, more definite, and useful—will become a possession, which he can administer with complete freedom and agility—but on no account will his knowledge be increased by thus reflecting upon it. He can reflect only upon what he has perceived or observed, and can compare it only with itself, but on no account can he produce new objects by mere thinking. ”

“ My reader, does a philosophical system, such as I have just now described, appear to you to be honorable to common sense and its interests—a system which insists of common sense that it should be cured of its inborn blindness in the school of the philosopher, and should there get an artificial light to replace its own natural light? ”

“ There did exist a philosophy which claimed that it could increase the above described collection by a mere drawing of conclusions, and which held that thinking was not only what we have just described it to be—a mere analyzing and recomposing of the given—but, at the same time, a producing and creating of something altogether new. According to this system, the philosopher was exclusively possessed of certain cognitions which common sense could not attain. ”

“ Now, if to this system there should oppose itself another system, claiming utterly to refute this pretension of a knowledge obtainable only through argument, but inaccessible to common sense, and to show in the most convincing manner that we have no Truth and Reality except the experience which is accessible to all; that there is nothing for life except the above described system of common sense; that life can be learned only through life itself, but on no account through speculation ”

“ According to it, the philosopher could produce through argument, a God, and an immortality for himself, and could argue himself wise and good. If such philosophers are logical, they must declare common sense to be insufficient for the purposes of daily life—since, otherwise, their expanding system would become superfluous—and must invite all who bear a human face to become as great philosophers as they are themselves, so that all may likewise become as good and virtuous as these philosophers. ”

“ However much it may have been your habit to read works merely in order to know what their authors have thought and said, I still wish that you should proceed differently in respect to this book. I appeal not to your memory, but to your understanding. ”

“ By observing the external world, and his own internal self, each man of healthy senses receives a collection of cognitions, experiences, and facts. These, the given of immediate perception, he can also renew in himself without that actual perception; he can reflect upon and can hold the manifold of the perception together ”