try and compare, let alone identify, such an honest, deep, thorough analysis of empirical perception as the one I have just given, which proves all the elements of perception to be subjective, with Fichte's algebraic equations of the Ego and the Non-Ego ; with his sophistical pseudo-demonstrations, which in order to be able to deceive his readers had to be clothed in the obscure, not to say absurd, language adopted by him ; with his explanations of the way in which the Ego spins the Non-Ego out of itself ; in short, with all the buffoonery of scientific emptiness. [1] Besides, I protest altogether against any community with this Fichte, as Kant publicly and emphatically did in a notice ad hoc in the "Jenaer Litteratur Zeitung." [2] Hegelians and similar ignoramuses may continue to hold forth to their heart's content upon Kant-Fichteian philosophy : there exists a Kantian philosophy and a Fichteian hocus-pocus,—this is the true state of the case, and will remain so, in spite of those who delight in extolling what is bad and in decrying what is good, and of these Germany possesses a larger number than any other country.
§ 22. Of the Immediate Object.
Thus it is from the sensations of our body that we receive the data for the very first application of the causal law, and it is precisely by that application that the perception of this class of objects arises. They therefore have their essence and existence solely in virtue of the intellectual function thus coming into play, and of its exercise.
- ↑ Wissenschaftsleere (literally, emptiness of science}, a pun of Schopenhauer's on the title of Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre (doctrine of science), which cannot be rendered in English. (Tr.'s Note.)
- ↑ Kant, "Erklärung über Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre." See the "Intelligenzblatt" of the Jena Literary Gazette (1799), No. 109.
