Sun-Clear Statement

Scanned, proofed and corrected from the original magazine edition for enjoyable reading. (Worth every penny spent!)


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Fichte's "Sun-clear Statement" regarding the true nature of the Science of Knowledge," a masterly exhibition of the treatment of scientific subjects in a popular form. We hope that all who have read, or will read these articles, will also enter upon a study of the great work which they are designed to prepare for; the study is worth the pains.

In the 'Sun-clear Statement', where he, as he says, attempts to 'force the reader to understand' him. But probably these things cannot be forced. And for the rest Fichte's characteristic attitude is to request, or command, his reader (or pupil) to think with him, to put himself in the posture required, to perform the act of thought described. He has not merely to be present at the lecture, but personally to perform the experiment. It is not a mere story to be heard and admired and forgotten.
De te, O pupil! fabula narratur." If it be a play, you are the actor as well as the onlooker: and the play is not a play, but the drama—the nameless drama—of the soul transacted in the unseen subconscious depths which bear up its visible life.

You do not therefore begin by getting a fact put before you. Your factum philosophy, must be your own act: not something done and dead, passive, a thing, but something doing, alive, active: your introspection must be, let us say, an experiment in the growing, responsive, quick life, not anatomy of the mere "cadaver". Think, therefore, and catch yourself in the act of thinking. Get something before your mind's eye, and see what it involves. It matters not what you perceive or feel: only realise it fully and penetrate its meaning and implications. It is of course the perception of something here and now. And you would be, in ordinary life, eager to get on to something else—to associate the present fact to something perceived elsewhere, to draw conclusions about things yet to come. But if you philosophise, you must check this practical minded impatience and concede yourself leisure to ponder deeply all that the single perception involves. Be content to sit awhile with Mary, by the side of Rachel of old. Let Martha bustle about. Fichte tells you that your perception rests,—and you, you see that it rests, on the 'I am that I am,'—on the I = I, i. e. on the continuity, identity, and unity of the percipient self. Make the statement of what you perceive, believe it, that is, assert it: and you have—done what? You have pledged your whole self —- "falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus" -— to its truth: its background is your whole and one mental life. And is that all? You have also called the world to witness: your statement—if, as it professes, it form an item however slight in the realm of knowledge—requests and expects every other 'I' to acknowledge your perception. Your certainty of the fact rests on the certainty of your self: and your self is a self certified by its ever -- postulated identity with other selves, so on ad infinitum. In affirming this (whatever be your statement) you affirm the Absolute Infinite Ego.