Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/529

 general Power,—I reflect that I perceive this Knowledge; that therefore I can perceive it; that since, according to the insight thus obtained, Knowledge is the expression of God, this Power itself is likewise his expression; that the Power exists only that it may be realized; and that consequently, in virtue of my Being from God, I shall perceive it. Only by means of this reflection do I arrive at the insight that I shall, absolutely:—but I shall, besides, attain this insight;—hence,—this must surely be now apparent—there must, likewise in virtue of my Being from God, be an absolute Power of this reflection contained in the general Power. The whole sphere which we have now described thus reveals itself as an Imperative of perception:—that I,—the Principle already perceived in the sphere of Intuition,—that I shall. In it, the Ego, which through mere reflection is immediately visible as a Principle, becomes the Principle of the Schema,—as is apparent in the insight of Knowledge in its unity, and of the Divine Life as its substratum, which we have already adduced;—to which I may now add, by virtue of this immediate reflection:—I think this,—I produce this insight. This Knowledge, by means of a Principle which is immediately visible as a Principle, is Pure Thought, as we said;—in contradistinction to that by means of an immediate invisible Principle—Intuition.

These two, Pure Thought and Intuition, are thus distinguished from each other in this,—that the latter, even in its very principle, is abolished and annihilated by the former. Their connection, on the other hand, consists in this,—that the latter is a condition of the practical possibility of the former;—also that the Ego which appears in the latter, still remains in the former in its mere Schema, and is there taken into account, although in its Actuality it is abolished along with Instinct