_me_ as object: we are speaking of the _me_ as having consciousness of itself,--that consciousness in which Fichte makes its existence consist,--and we ask whether this _me_ has always existed or not; if the first, the _me_ is God; if the second, you must either acknowledge creation, or hold that a being which does not exist can give itself existence. 138. Fichte does not retreat from the first consequence, and although he does not call _me_ God, he gives it all the attributes of divinity. "If the _me_," he says, "is only in so far as it supposes itself, it is only _for_ the supposing, and supposes only for being. _The me is for the me_,--but if it supposes itself absolutely as it is, it supposes itself necessary, and is necessary, for the _me_. _I am only for myself; but I am necessary for myself_--(in saying _for myself_ I always suppose my being.) "_To suppose itself_, and _to be_, are, speaking of the _me_, entirely the same. The proposition: I am, because I have supposed myself, can, therefore, be also expressed in this manner: _I am absolutely, because I am_. "Moreover, the _me_ which supposes itself, and the _me_ which is, are entirely identical; they are one and the same thing. The _me_ is for that _which_ it supposes itself; and it supposes itself as _that_ which it is. Therefore, _I am absolutely, what I am_. "The immediate expression of the act which we have now developed would be the following formula: _I am absolutely_, that is, _I am absolutely, because I am; and am absolutely, what I am; both for the me_. "But if the enunciation of this act is intended to be placed at the head of a doctrine of science, it should be expressed somewhat in the following manner: _The me originally supposes its own being absolutely._"[55] [55] _Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre_, I. Theil, § I., pp. 97-98. There is only one fact which is clear in all this extravagance of expression; and that is, the pantheism openly professed by Fichte; the deification of the _me_, and, consequently, the absorption of all reality in the _me_. The _me_ ceases to be a limited spirit; it is an infinite reality. Fichte does not deny it: "The me determines itself, the absolute totality of reality is ascribed to the _me_. The _me_ can determine itself only as reality, for it is supposed absolutely as reality, and no negation whatever is supposed in it.[56] [56] Ib., II., Th. § 4. B., p. 129. "But reality is supposed in the _me_. Therefore the _me_ must be supposed as the _absolute totality_ of reality, (therefore as a quantity, which contains all quantities, and which may be a measure for them all;) and this, too, originally and absolutely, if the synthesis, which we have just explained problematically, be possible, and the contradiction is to be solved in a satisfactory manner. Therefore: