Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/531

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only a Schema of the Schema. The required Being is not yet realized.

I shall be. Who is this I? Evidently that which is,—the Ego given in Intuition,—the Individual. This shall be.

What does its Being signify? It is given as a Principle in the World of Sense. Blind Instinct is indeed annihilated, and in its place there now stands the clearly perceived Shall. But the Power that at first set this Instinct in motion remains, in order that the Shall may now set it (the Power) in motion, and become its higher determining Principle. By means of this Power I shall therefore, within its sphere,—the World of Sense,—produce and make manifest that which I recognise as my true Being in the Super-sensuous World.

The Power is given as an Infinite;—hence that which in the One World of Thought is absolutely One—that which I shall—becomes in the World of Intuition an infinite problem for my Power, which I have to solve in all Eternity.

This Infinitude, which is properly a mere indefiniteness, can have place only in Intuition, but by no means in my true Essential Being, which, as the Schema of God, is as simple and unchangeable as himself. How then can this simplicity and unchangeableness be produced within the yet continuing Infinitude, which is expressly consecrated by the absolute Shall addressed to me as an Individual?

If, in the onflow of Time, the Ego, in every successive moment, had to determine itself by a particular act, through the conception of what it shall,—then, in its