135. Although this philosophy is any thing but clear, it seems to have satisfied its author, who goes on with admirable gravity to say: "Thus, then, it is _perfectly clear_ in what sense we here use the word _me_, and we are led to a determinate explanation of the _me_ as absolute subject. _Every thing whose being (existence) consists solely in its supposing itself as being_, is the _me_, as absolute subject. So far as it _supposes_ itself, it _is_; and so far as it _is_, it _supposes_ itself; and the _me_ is therefore absolute and necessary for the _me_. That which is not for itself is no _me_." Ideal pantheism could not be established more explicitly, and at the same time more gratuitously; one is astonished to find one's self seriously occupied with such extravagances. They have made a noise, because they have not been known; they ought therefore to be presented to the reader as they are, even at the risk of fatiguing him. 136. Fichte tries to make his ideas clearer, but we may be always sure that each explanation will add to their obscurity. Let us permit him to continue: "Explanation! One often hears the question asked, _what_ was I before I came to the consciousness of myself? The natural answer to this is: _I_ was nothing at all; for I was not the _me_. The _me_ is only in so far as it is conscious of itself. The possibility of this question is founded on a confusion of the _me_ as _subject_, and the _me_ as _object_ of the reflection of the absolute subject, and is entirely inadmissible. The _me_ represents itself, takes itself so far under the form of the representation, and is now for the first time _something_, an object; consciousness receives under this form a substratum which _is_, and although without actual consciousness, is here thought corporeally. Such a case is considered, and it is asked: what was then the _me_; that is, what is the substratum of consciousness? But even then we think the _absolute subject_ as that which has intuition of this substratum, _together with it_, although we do not take note of it; we also, without taking note of it, at the same time think that which we pretended to abstract, and thus fall into a contradiction. We can think absolutely nothing without at the same time thinking the _me_ as conscious of of itself; we can never abstract our own consciousness: hence all questions of this kind are unanswerable; for they would be, if well understood, unaskable."