Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/523

 is first introduced the practical possibility of such schematizing, it is clear that there is nothing left remaining in Intuition but the mere Form of Power as given in its immediate expression. It is (§ V.) a Power of Contemplation,—and that indeed without direction towards the one Divine Life, which from this standing-point remains concealed;—an undefined, wholly indeterminate, and yet absolute Power,—and hence an Infinite. It therefore schematizes itself as contemplating an infinity in one glance:—; it consequently thus also schematizes itself as contracting and limiting itself, in the same undivided Intuition, to a point in that first infinity, a point which in itself is likewise infinitely divisible, a consolidated infinite Space within the other simple infinite Space,—or ;—thus as an infinite Power of self-concentration, and consequently also as an unlimited Material World in Space:—all which, according to the fundamental law of Knowledge which we have already adduced (§ V.) must appear to it as actual, self-existent Being.

Further:—by virtue of its merely formal power of Being, it is an absolutely primitive Principle. In order to schematize itself as such in Intuition, it must, antecedent to its actual activity, perceive a possible form of activity which—thus it must seem to it—it either might or might not be able to realize. This possible form of activity cannot be perceived by it in the Absolute Imperative, which to this point of view is invisible; hence it can only be perceived in a likewise blindly schematized Causality, which indeed is not an immediate Causality, but only appears to become so through the apparent realization of the Power. But such a Causality is an Instinct. It was necessary that the Power should feel itself impelled to this or that form of activity, but without the source of the impulse being immediately perceived, since such an immediate recognition would deprive