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by Johann Gottlieb Fichte (Author)
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1873 Excerpt: ...I. I confess it. But I cannot do otherwise than think so. It seems as if I knew it immediately. Spirit. What this answer, "thou knowest it immediately," may signify, we shall see should we be brought back to it as the only possible one. We will however first try all other possible methods of ascertaining the grounds of the assertion that everything must have a cause. Dost thou know this by immediate perception? I. How could I? since perception only declares that in me something is, according as I am determined this way or that, but never that it has become so; still less that it has become so by means of a foreign power lying beyond all perception. Spirit. Or dost thou obtain this principle by generalisation of thy observation of external things, the cause of which thou hast always discovered out of themselves; an observation which thou now appliest to thyself and to thine own condition 1 I. Do not treat me like a child, and ascribe to me palpable absurdities. By the principle of causality I first arrive at a knowledge of things out of myself; how then can I again, by observation of these things, arrive at this principle itself Shall the earth rest on the great elephant, and the great elephant again upon the earth? Spirit. Or is this principle a deduction from some other general truth? L Which again could be founded neither on immediate perception, nor on the observation of external things, and concerning the origin of which thou wouldst still raise other questions I might only possess this previous fundamental truth by immediate knowledge. Better to say this at once of the principle of causality and let thy conjectures rest. Spirit. Let it be so;--we then obtain, besides the first immediate knowledge of our own states, through sensible perceptio...
