Presuppose means nothing else than put a _thought_ in front, or think something before everything else and think the rest from the starting-point of this that has _been thought_, _i. e._ measure and criticise it by this. In other words, this is as much as to say that thinking is to begin with something already thought. If thinking began at all, instead of being begun, if thinking were a subject, an acting personality of its own, as even the plant is such, then indeed there would be no abandoning the principle that thinking must begin with itself. But it is just the personification of thinking that brings to pass those innumerable errors. In the Hegelian system they always talk as if thinking or "the thinking spirit" (_i. e._ personified thinking, thinking as a ghost) thought and acted; in critical liberalism it is always said that "criticism" does this and that, or else that "self-consciousness" finds this and that. But, if thinking ranks as the personal actor, thinking itself must be presupposed; if criticism ranks as such, a thought must likewise stand in front. Thinking and criticism could be active only starting from themselves, would have to be themselves the presupposition of their activity, as without being they could not be active. But thinking, as a thing presupposed, is a fixed thought, a _dogma_; thinking and criticism, therefore, can start only from a _dogma_, _i. e._ from a thought, a fixed idea, a presupposition. With this we come back again to what was enunciated above, that Christianity consists in the development of a world of thoughts, or that it is the proper "freedom of thought," the "free thought," the "free spirit." The "true" criticism, which I called "servile," is therefore just as much "free" criticism, for it is not _my own_. The case stands otherwise when what is yours is not made into something that is of itself, not personified, not made independent an a "spirit" to itself. _Your_ thinking has for a presupposition not "thinking," but _you_. But thus you do presuppose yourself after all? Yes, but not for myself, but for my thinking. Before my thinking, there is--I. From this it follows that my thinking is not preceded by a _thought_, or that my thinking is without a "presupposition." For the presupposition which I am for my thinking is not one _made by thinking_, not one _thought of_, but it is _posited_ thinking _itself_, it is the _owner_ of the thought, and proves only that thinking is nothing more than--_property_, _i. e._ that an "independent" thinking, a "thinking spirit," does not exist at all. This reversal of the usual way of regarding things might so resemble an empty playing with abstractions that even those against whom it is directed would acquiesce in the harmless aspect I give it, if practical consequences were not connected with it.