HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

and used for a time in widely extended circles, it was all too well
adapted to discredit philosophy as an empty bombast. 1
2. The system of reason with Fichte, in the first period of his
philosophical activity (about 1800), is, in its content also, in full
accord with the above method. The original "act" (Thathandlung)
of self-consciousness, which is determined by nothing except itself,
is that the " /" or self can only be "posited" by being distinguished
from a " Not-I" or "not-self." Since, however, the not-self is posited
only in the self, i.e. historically expressed, the object posited only
in consciousness, the self and the not-self (i.e. subject and object)
must reciprocally determine each other within the " I " or self. From
this results the theoretical or the practical series of self-conscious
ness, according as the Not-I or the " I " is the determining part.
The functions of the theoretical reason are now developed by
Fichte in the following manner : The particular stages result from
the reflection of consciousness upon its own previously determined
action. By virtue of its own activity, which is limited by nothing
external, it presses beyond every bound which the "I" has set for
itself in the Not-I as object. The pure perceptions, space and
time, the categories as rules of the understanding, and the principles
of the reason, are treated as the several forms of this self-determin
ing. In place of the antitheses which Kant had set up between
these particular strata, Fichte set the principle, that in each higher
stage the reason apprehends in purer form what it has accomplished
in the lower stage. Knowing is a process of self-knowledge on the
part of the reason, beginning with sense perception and ascending
to complete knowledge. 2 But this whole series of the theoretical
reason presupposes an original " self-limitation " of the I. If this
is given, the entire series is comprehensible in accordance with the
principle of self-perception ; for every activity has its object and*
its reason in the preceding. The first self-limitation has its ground
in no preceding act, and therefore, theoretically, no ground what
ever. It is a groundless, free activity, but as such, the ground of all
other activities. This groundless [undetermined] free act is sen
sation. It falls into consciousness, therefore, only in its content,
which is to be taken up into perception ; as act it is, like all that has
1 Cf. the humorous portrayal in G. RUmelin, Eedcn und Aufsntze, pp. 47-50,
Freiburg, 1888.
2 Without any directly visible influence from Leibniz, his conception of the
relation of the different knowing faculties asserts itself here in contrast with
the Kantian separation. Only it is to be noted that this "history of the devel
opment of reason" is, with Leibniz, determined causally, with Fichte teleologi-