This last now, to make thinking an affair of egoistic option, an affair of the single person,[103] a mere pastime or hobby as it were, and to take from it the importance of "being the last decisive power"; this degradation and desecration of thinking; this equalization of the unthinking and thoughtful ego; this clumsy but real "equality,"--criticism is not able to produce, because it itself is only the priest of thinking, and sees nothing beyond thinking but--the deluge. Criticism does indeed affirm, _e. g._, that free criticism may overcome the State, but at the same time it defends itself against the reproach which is laid upon it by the State government, that it is "self-will and impudence"; it thinks, then, that "self-will and impudence" may not overcome, it alone may. The truth is rather the reverse: the State can be really overcome only by impudent self-will. It may now, to conclude with this, be clear that in the critic's new change of front he has not transformed himself, but only "made good an oversight," "disentangled a subject," and is saying too much when he speaks of "criticism criticising itself": it, or rather he, has only criticised its "oversight" and cleared it of its "inconsistencies." If he wanted to criticise criticism, he would have to look and see if there was anything in its presupposition. I on my part start from a presupposition in presupposing _myself_; but my presupposition does not struggle for its perfection like "Man struggling for his perfection," but only serves me to enjoy it and consume it. I consume my presupposition, and nothing else, and exist only in consuming it. But that presupposition is therefore not a presupposition at all: for, as I am the Unique, I know nothing of the duality of a presupposing and a presupposed ego (an "incomplete" and a "complete" ego or man); but this, that I consume myself, means only that I am. I do not presuppose myself, because I am every moment just positing or creating myself, and am I only by being not presupposed but posited, and, again, posited only in the moment when I posit myself; _i. e._, I am creator and creature in one. If the presuppositions that have hitherto been current are to melt away in a full dissolution, they must not be dissolved into a higher presupposition again,--_i. e._ a thought, or thinking itself, criticism. For that dissolution is to be for _my_ good; otherwise it would belong only in the series of the innumerable dissolutions which, in favor of others, (_e. g._ this very Man, God, the State, pure morality, etc.), declared old truths to be untruths and did away with long-fostered presuppositions. Part Second I