Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/453

THE THREE PRINCIPLES. 431 physics. We must not conceive the ego as something uhich must exist before it can put forth its activities. Doing is not a property or consequence of being, but being is3ii_accident^ and effe^t^^^ All[ substantiali ty is derivative, axtivitjLi^u^iriQial ; being arises from doing. The ego is nothing more than self-position ; it_exists_not_only for itself ifur sich). but also through its elf {durch sick). The actions expressed in the three principles are never found pure in experience, nor do they represent isolated acts of the ego. Intelligence can think nothing without thinking itself therewith ; it is equally impossible for it to think " I am" without at the same time thinking something else which is not itse lf.; subjec j and obj ect_^r£jni&P4rable. It is rather true that the acts of position described are one single, all-inclusive act, which forms only the first member in a connected system of pre-conscious actions, through which consciousness is produced, and the complete investi- gation of whose members constitutes the further business of the Science of Knowledge as a theory of the nature of reason. In this the Science of Knowledge employs a method which, by its rhythm of analysis and synthesis, development and reconciliation of opposites, became the model of Hegel's dialectic method. The synthesis described in the third principle, although it balances thesis and antithesis and unites them in itself, still contains contrary elements, in order to whose combination a new synthesis must be sought. In this, in turn, the analytic discovery and the synthetic adjustment of a contrariety is repeated, etc., etc. The original synthesis, moreover, prescribes a division of the inquiry into two parts, one theoretical and with which it ends. In neither is the ego conceived as individual ; in the former the I-ness is not yet determined to the point of individuality, in the latter individuality has disappeared. Fichte is right when he thinks it remarkable that " a system whose beginning and end and whole nature is aimed at forget- fulness of individtiality in the theoretical sphere and denial of it in the practical sphere " should be " called egoism." And yet not only opponents, but even adher- ents of Fichte, as is shown by Friedrich SchlegeVs philosophy of genius, have, by confusing the pure and the empirical ego, been guilty of the mistake thus censured. On the philosophy of the romanticists cf. Erdmann's History, vol. i:. §^ 314, 315 ; Zellcr, p. 562 seq.; and R. Haym, Die Roniantische SchuU, 1870.