OF KNOWLEDGE. 



359 



indeed did not exist in the form of individual minds, but 

 in that of the all-embracing mind or consciousness which 

 formed the background of everything. To get hold of 

 this the philosophical thinker had to retire into the 

 recesses of his own mind and rise through a process of 

 intellectual intuition. And that such was possible, and 

 not only an interesting and poetical fiction, was made 

 evident by the existence in every one of the prompting 

 "Will or active principle. This conception of an intel- 

 lectual intuition, 1 of an intuitive understanding, had 

 already been suggested by Kant in the first, and more 

 fully developed in the last, of his three Critiques, in 

 which he had thrown out the idea of an intellect which 

 was not merely discursive and analytical, but which was 

 synthetic and intuitive. The existence of organised 

 beings in nature, and of the creations of the poetic and 

 artistic genius, proved, according to Kant, that sense 

 and intellect, the world of external appearance and the 

 world of reason (freedom), are not absolutely separate, 

 but are rooted in an original synthesis or common 

 ground. 



1 Fichte has given several ex- 

 planations of what he means by 

 intellectual intuition. " This con- 

 templation of his own self which 

 we expect from the thinker, and 

 through which he becomes aware 

 of himself, I call intellectual in- 

 tuition. It is the immediate con- 

 sciousness that I act and what I 

 am performing : it is that through 

 which I know something, because 

 I do it. That there exists such a 

 faculty of intellectual intuition 

 cannot be demonstrated nor de- 

 veloped through reasoning. Every 

 one must find it immediately in 

 himself. . , . The demand that one 



should prove it through reasoning 

 is much stranger than the desire of 

 one born blind that one should 

 explain to him what colour is with- 

 out his being able to see it. ... 

 Every one who claims to be active 

 appeals to this intuition. In it 

 lies the source of life, and without 

 it there is death. ... It is a 

 remarkable thing in modern philo- 

 sophy that it has not been perceived 

 that what can be said against the 

 existence of an intellectual intui- 

 tion may also be said against sen- 

 suous intuition [perception] " (vol. 

 i. p. 463). 



