consciousness as this manifests itself in life and in the particular sciences, Fichteanism adopts the name Science of Knowledge, being distinguished from the particular sciences by the fact that they discuss the voluntary, and it the necessary, representations or actions of the spirit. (The representation of a triangle or a circle is a free one, it may be omitted; the representation of space in general is a necessary one, from which it is impossible for us to abstract.) How does intelligence come to have sensations, to intuit space and time, and to form just such categories (thing and property, cause and effect, and not others quite different)?  While Kant correctly described these functions of the intuiting and thinking spirit, and showed them actual, they must further be proven, be shown necessary or deduced.  Deduced whence?  From the “deed-acts” (Thathandlungen) of the ego which lie at the basis of all consciousness, and the highest of which are formulated in three principles.

%(b) The Three Principles.%—­At the portal of the Science of Knowledge we are met not by an assertion, but by a summons—­a summons to self-contemplation.  Think anything whatever and observe what thou dost, and of necessity must do, in thinking.  Thou wilt discover that thou dost never think an object without thinking thyself therewith, that it is absolutely impossible for thee to abstract from thine ego.  And second, consider what thou dost when thou dost think thine “ego.”  This means to affirm or posit one’s self, to be a subject-object.  The nature of self-consciousness is the identity of the representing [subject] and the represented [object].  The pure ego is not a fact, but an original doing, the act of being for self (Fuersichsein), and the (philosophical, or—­as seems to be the case according to some passages—­even the common) consciousness of this doing an intellectual intuition; through this we become conscious of the deed-act which is ever (though unconsciously) performing.  This is the meaning of the first of the principles:  “The ego posits originally and absolutely its own being,” or, more briefly:  The ego posits itself; more briefly still:  I am.  The nature of the ego consists in positing itself as existing.[1] Since, besides this self-cogitation of the ego, an op-position is found among the facts of empirical consciousness (think only of the principle of contradiction), and yet, besides the ego, there is nothing which could be opposed, we must assume as a second principle:  To the ego there is absolutely opposited a non-ego.  These two principles must be united, and this can be accomplished only by positing the contraries (ego and non-ego), since they are both in the ego, as reciprocally limiting or partially sublating one another, that is, each as divisible (capable of quantitative determination).  Accordingly the third principle runs:  “The ego opposes in the ego a divisible non-ego to the divisible ego.”  From these principles Fichte