Page:Fichte Science of Knowledge.djvu/22

iv completely unintelligible their language seemed at first. There were words and an apparent statement of progressive insights, but we could not understand even the words, much less verify in our own introspection the progressive insights : we had not any sufficient power of sustained introspection or inward observation. We had rarely ever observed other objects than external ones. We had used our powers of sense-perception only, and had reflected only on their data. When we had contemplated spiritual or mental facts we had done so in a symbolical mode of thinking. We had used mental pictures and images, and thus objectified and materialized the operations of the mind and contemplated them as things existing in space.

By the study of the Kantian writings we came to acquire by degrees the new faculties of introspection. We acquired some power of seeing internal processes without the aid of mental pictures and images. Then the words and apparent statements of progressive insights began to have precise and reasonable meaning to us, and a new realm of knowledge arose before our souls with continually increasing clearness. Its clearness in fact was of such a character that all previous knowledge seemed quite dim in comparison. We found ourselves learning to see truths that are universal and necessary— "apodictic," as Kant calls them. Previous views of truth had not seemed exhaustive. Existence might be otherwise, or perhaps was otherwise, to a different spectator. But now with the newly acquired power of introspection we could see glimpses of the final and exhaustive truth. We felt it now to be in our power to make indefinite progress in this new inventory of the world. This progress consists in a descent from the universal to the particular.