Descartes' minor is: "_I think_;" this he does not prove, but refers to consciousness beyond which he confesses that he cannot pass. Fichte's minor is this: "X is really asserted in the _me_;" which is equivalent to saying: the relation of the predicate with the subject is really known by the _me_; and as, according to Fichte himself, the proposition may be selected at pleasure, to say that the relation of the predicate with the subject is known by the _me_, is the same as to say that any relation whatever is known by the _me_; which in clearer terms may be expressed thus, _I think_. 84. Here we would remark, that the difference, if any there be, is altogether in favor of the French philosopher, who understands by thought every internal phenomenon of which we are conscious. In order to establish this fact, he has no need of analyzing propositions, and confusing the understanding upon those very points where it most requires clearness and precision. Fichte, to arrive at the same point, takes a roundabout way. Descartes points his finger to it, and says: _this is it_. The one acts like a sophist, the other like a true man of genius. Had the German philosopher confined his forms, little calculated as they are to illustrate science, to what we have thus far examined, their greatest inconvenience would have been to weary both the author and his readers; but unfortunately his mysterious _me_, which makes its appearance at the very vestibule of science, and which, in the eyes of sound reason, can only be what it was to Descartes,--the human mind, knowing its existence by its own thought,--goes on dilating in Fichte's hands, like a gigantic spectre, which, beginning in a single point, ends by hiding its head in the heavens and its feet in the abyss. This _me_, absolute subject, is then a being which exists because it supposed itself: it is a being which creates its own self, absorbs every thing, is every thing, and is revealed in the human mind as in one of the infinite phases of its infinite existence. What we have thus far said, suffices to show the tendencies of Fichte's system. We are here treating of certainty and its foundations; this, then, is not the place to anticipate what we propose to say more at length upon this system when we come to explain the idea of substance and refute pantheism: for this is one of the gravest errors of modern philosophy; everywhere, and under all aspects, it must be combatted, but to do this we must attack it in its roots. This is why we have examined at such length Fichte's fundamental reflection in his _Doctrine of Science_, and stripped it of the importance which he claimed for it, so as to make it the basis of a transcendental science; for he flattered himself with being able to determine the absolutely unconditioned principle of all human knowledge.(7) CHAPTER VIII. UNIVERSAL IDENTITY.