What confusion and mystery in the expression of the commonest things! How great Descartes appears beside Fichte! Each makes the fact of consciousness revealing existence the beginning of his philosophy. The one expresses his thoughts clearly, with simplicity and in a language which all the world does or may understand; the other, in order to seem an inventor, and to show that he has no master, envelops himself in a cloud of mystery, with darkness all around, whence in a hollow voice he pronounces his oracles. Descartes says: "I think, I cannot doubt it, it is a fact attested to me by my internal sense; no one can think without existing; therefore I exist." This is clear, simple, and ingenuous; it manifests a true philosopher, one without affectation or pretension. Fichte says: "Take any proposition whatever; for example, A is A:" and then goes on to explain how the verb _to be_ in propositions does not express the absolute existence of the subject, but its relation with the predicate; the whole with a show of doctrine, wearisome in its form, and ridiculous in its sterility; and this too when he only wants to inform us that A is in the _me_, because the relation of the predicate with the subject, that is, X, is possible only in a being, since A denotes some being or other. Let us compare the two syllogisms. Descartes says: "No one can think without existing; but I think; therefore I exist." Fichte says literally what follows: "X is only possible in relation to an A; but X is really supposed in the _me_; therefore A must also be supposed in the _me_." There is at bottom no difference at all, and the only difference in form is that which exists between the language of a vain man and that of a sensible man. At bottom the syllogisms are not different, we repeat it. Descartes' major proposition is: "Whatever thinks exists." He does not prove it, and admits that it cannot be proved. Fichte's major is: "X is possible only in relation to an A," or, in other words, no relation of a predicate with a subject, in so far as it is known, is possible without a being which knows. "X must mark a relation between an unknown supposition of A and an absolute supposition of the same A, _at least in so far as that relation is supposed_," that is, inasmuch as it is known. And how does Fichte prove a relative supposition to suppose an absolute supposition, that is, a subject in which it is supposed? Like Descartes, he does not prove it at all. There is no relative A without an absolute A; what does not exist cannot think. This is clear and evident; farther than this neither Fichte nor Descartes goes.