2. In the second place, this awakening of the Ego to a consciousness of itself involves a curious contradiction. Duty is by nature contradictory. Duty calls me to know myself and to perform my task, and yet in that call duty prevents the task from being performed. In attempting to know duty completely I am always under the condition of an opposing and limiting non-Ego. The non-Ego is essential to the Ego and at the same time thwarts the Ego’s full knowledge of itself. So long as the non-Ego exists, no complete knowledge of myself is possible. A limiting non-Ego makes the Ego limited, and therefore prevents complete knowledge and fulfillment of duty. Duty calls upon us to perform a task, but under conditions such that it cannot be performed. So long as the boy strives in his legal profession, duty appears; but so long is duty rendered incomplete. Moral progress is endless, but that only shows how contented we must be with the process of striving and not with some static condition. To strive morally is reality; the goal is nowhere. The contradiction is seen in the eternal contrast between what is and what ought to be, between the moral task and the actual performance. We are under the requirement to perform, and in the requirement is the restraint. The dialectic process is endless. First there is the stage which Fichte calls the Thesis in the call of the absolute Ego. The next stage is the Antithesis, seen in the mutually limiting Ego and non-Ego. The next stage is the Synthesis, in which some accomplishment is gained, but which becomes only the Thesis for another Antithesis; and so on infinitely. The terms Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis are important, for they are employed by Fichte’s successors, Schelling and Hegel. =Romanticism.=[61] “We seek the plan of nature in the outside world. We ourselves are this plan. Why need we traverse the difficult roads through physical nature? The better and purer road lies within our own mind.” (Novalis.)