i'JCHTE. 77 



Thus under the form of the subject which receives the object is neces- 

 sarily placed the me which knows itself and recognizes itself. The me 

 taking itself as object, or me=me, is supposed in all knowledge. Thus 

 the me, so to say, unwinds itself; it is at the same time subject and ob- 

 ject, unity and dwality, this is simply expressed in the common phrase 

 " a man knoios himself^'''' a proposition in which the man is successively 

 and at the same time subject and ruler. Every reflective verb is an ex- 

 pression borrowed from the facts of consciousness. 



But we can by abstraction extract from every objective judgment 

 that implied duality of the self-percipient me. In every equation of 

 A=B we can read me=me, where the abstract me takes itself as the 

 object. It is the abstract faculty of consciousness, it is the pure con- 

 sciousness, it is the absolute me becoming relative to itself and yet not 

 ceasing to be absolute. Although in fact or in act we cannot a priori 

 seize upon such a state of the me, it is still evident that potentially such 

 a state belongs to it; it is its essence prior to all determinalion, and as it 

 does not realize the act of knowing but upon that condition, as that 

 pure act is supposed in every empirical act, that abstract act implied in 

 every concrete act, we may consider it as existing a jnlori, as a previous 

 datum of the subject, as a primitive vvhich never becomes actual to the 

 pure state, as it were an infinite pre-determination of the infinite activ- 

 ity. Thus in itself, taken a^ an abstraction, conceived a priori, the sub- 

 ject is united-duality, the subject-object, the in-determinate-determinate, 

 the infinite-finite, the unlimited-limited; all these apparent antitheses are 

 not as paradoxical as they appear, as here again we have constant anal- 

 ogies in every reflective verb, tliat is to say, in every expression of an 

 action where the agent proceeds from himself to himself The very 

 words me and consciousness signify nothing less. The name "me" 

 designates nothing less than a being that knows itself to be ; conscious- 

 ness is no less than the act of an agent that knows that it acts. 



Jn those terms we have to do only with what is an evident truth, 

 very simple, and perhaps very trite. This is the least at which he aim- 

 ed and the point from which Fichte started. 



From the fact that consciousness, or me=me, is included in every 

 act of cognition, he concludes that this alone is included there, and as 

 there is nothing but the me in the act, the active is everything. 



From the fact that the act is the necessary form of the active, which 

 is the whole being of the me, he concludes that the act produces the 

 whole being, and as the me manifests or attests itself in its self-cogni- 

 tion, by which alone it realizes itself, it is by this means alone that it is 

 real, and nothing being real but by it, nothing but it is real. 



