We put the question thus: is consciousness really compelled—of course, through some sort of a connection, since it can never be absolutely compelled—to place any of its results within time, as it certainly

But now we speak of a development through an infinite principle; hence we may expect that freedom must here be thought by us under another determination; and these two different spheres must on no account

Thus we must make also our own world, the inner world of consciousness, our free property, and we are just now, in the present course of lectures, engaged upon this task, without however being able as

But this new causality stands under certain conditions of freedom, since it is dependent not only upon the above described attention, and upon a proficiency in this sort of reproduction on the part of

Let us finally observe, that the object of external perception can never become ground or principle, as the Ego is, and as we have explained it to be, but only a causethrough its mere existence, as will

For, as I assert (and you doubtless have convinced yourselves of the correctness of my assertion by your own observation and contemplation), the Ego—as we for the present call it, and as the ordinary use

But in this description we have also a double contemplation, the component parts whereof are just as distinct as they were found to be in the former case: firstly, a contemplation of the condition, and,

But the natural philosopher, even if the plant falls within his sphere of vision, may either see or not see it, as he chooses; for he may fill up the same time of his life with other thoughts. If he chooses

It is through this having causality that that life of knowledge (the Ego) rises above the object (the non-Ego); for it is not like the object, a dead, permanent being, but a living producing. But in its

3. We have here various new creations: Firstly, there is as the ground of this newly-arisen consciousness of the image a real self-liberating, a self-liberating on the part of the life of knowledge itself.

That understanding can very well join something like freedom to a substance as its background, which substance, if closely examined, is however always of a material nature; but finds it very hard, nay,

Hence it is not proper to say, in the ordinary sense of the word, “I” (signifying an individual, which ordinary use of language we here do not wish to deviate from, remaining, as we do, within the region

Hence we express the above fact thus: in immediate connection with what we have recognized in all external perception as contemplating, we moreover think;and it is precisely through this thinking, and

This reply is, indeed, everywhere made by common sense when left to itself; and if any philosopher answers differently, it is done not through his natural understanding left to itself, but through previously

Chapter 1Concerning External Perception All our external perception presupposes, firstly, an activity of the mind which is checked and which we call sensation; secondly, an activity of the mind which gives