ESTIMATE OF LEIBNIZ'S PHILOSOPHY l8l 



The reality of the world of sense is for Fichte a result of 

 the activity of imagination. Our mind creates our sensa- 

 tions ; but it creates them unconsciously, and thus our 

 imagination attributes them to things outside of us, 

 objectifies them. Yet imagination does not give us mere 

 illusions, but truths more or less perfectly expressed. * If 

 it be shown, as the present system should show, that 

 upon this activity of imagination rests the possibility of 

 our consciousness, our life, our being for ourselves, that 

 is to say, our being as ego [unseres Seyn als Jcfc], this 

 activity of imagination cannot cease, unless we are to 

 make abstraction from our ego, which would involve a 

 contradiction, since that which makes abstraction cannot 

 make abstraction from itself. This activity of imagina- 

 tion, then, does not deceive us, but gives us truth, the 

 only possible truth \ ' There are, as it were, two sides 

 to our knowledge of things. In so far as it is sensation 

 (that is to say, an idea unconsciously created by the mind) 

 it is a product of the non-ego, the object ; while in so far 

 as it is an idea consciously ' projected ' by us or referred 

 to something, it is a product of the ego, the subject. 

 But the action of ego and non-ego is reciprocal, and they 

 both have their source in the original self-consciousness 

 from which they necessarily proceed 2 . 



It is, of course, beyond the scope of our intention 

 to consider the many essential differences between the 

 systems of Leibniz and of Fichte : to have indicated their 

 connexion is sufficient. And the words of Schelling may 



conception, the oppositions of thought which play so important 

 a part in philosophy being and thought, mind and nature, soul 

 and body, freedom and law, natural inclination and moral effort, 

 mechanism and teleology are reconciled. They appear in their 

 due place as different aspects of the several stages in and through 

 which the spiritual order is realized.' Adamson, Fichte, pp. 219, 

 220. 



1 Fichte, SammtUche Werke, i. 227. 



3 'The ego, as understood in common unscientific language, 

 posits neither the external object nor itself, but both are posited 

 through general and absolute thinking, and through this the 

 object is given for the ego, as well as the ego for itself.' Fichte, 

 Werke, ii. 562. 



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