is still nothing but the common form of the Object as such: therefore that it always presupposes the Object and does not, as valid before and independently of it, first introduce it, and cannot make the Object arise in conformity with its own legislation. Thus this starting from the Object and the above-mentioned starting from the Subject have in common, that both presuppose what they pretend to derive: _i.e._, the necessary correlate of their starting-point." This last assertion "that the Principle of Sufficient Reason _already presupposes the Object_, but does not, as valid before and independently of it, first introduce it, and cannot make the Object arise in conformity with its own legislation," seemed to me so far to clash with the proof given by Schopenhauer in § 21 of the "Fourfold Root," as, according to the latter, it is _the function of the Subject's understanding_ which primarily creates the _objective_ world out of the subjective feelings of the sensuous organs by the application of the Principle of Sufficient Reason; so that all that is Object, as such, after all comes into being only in conformity with the Principle of Sufficient Reason, consequently that this principle cannot, as Schopenhauer asserted in his polemic against Fichte, already presuppose the Object. In 1852, therefore, I wrote as follows to Schopenhauer:-- "In your arguments against Fichte, where you say that the Principle of Sufficient Reason already presupposes the Object, and cannot, as valid before and independently of it, first introduce it, the objection occurred to me anew, that in your "Fourfold Root" you had made the Object of perception first come into being through the application of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and that you yourself, therefore, derive the Object from the Subject, as, for instance, p. 73 of the "Fourfold Root" (2nd edition). How then can you maintain against Fichte that the Object is always pre-supposed by the Subject? I know of no way of solving this difficulty but the following: The Subject only presupposes in the Object what belongs to the thing in itself, what is inscrutable; but it creates itself the _representation_ of the Object, _i.e._ that by which the thing in itself becomes _phenomenon_. For instance, when I see a tree, my Subject assumes the thing in itself of that tree; whereas the _representation_ of it conversely presupposes the operation of my Subject, the transition from the effect (in my eye) to its cause." To this Schopenhauer replied as follows on the 12th of July, 1852:--