Page:Fichte Science of Knowledge.djvu/65

 this form, either in regard to its determinateness or in regard to its validity, from any other science, since itself is to furnish all other sciences their systematic form. Hence, the science of knowledge must contain this form within itself, and must itself show up the ground of this form. Let us consider this a little, and it will directly appear what this assertion means. That whereof any thing is known we will, in the mean while, call the content, and that which is known thereof the form of a proposition. (In the proposition, gold is a body; that whereof is known is gold and the body; that which is known of them is, that they are in a certain respect equal, and might in so far replace each other. It is an affirmative proposition, and this relation is its form.)

No proposition is possible without content or without form. It must contain something whereof we know, and something which is known thereof. Hence, the first principle of the science of knowledge must have both content and form. Now, this first principle is to be immediately and of itself certain, and this can only signify: its content must determine its form, and its form its content. Its form can only fit its content, and its content can only fit its form; every other form connected with that content, or every other content connected with that form, would cancel that principle itself, and thus annihilate all knowledge. Hence, the form of the absolute first principle of the science of knowledge is not only contained in that principle itself, but is