The philosopher of the first mentioned sort, on the contrary, does just the reverse. He produces a product of art. In working out his object he only takes into consideration its matter, and pays no attention to an internal self-developing power thereof. Nay, this power must be deadened before he undertakes his work, or else it might resist his labor. It is from the dead matter, therefore, that he produces something, and solely by means of his own power, in accordance with his previously resolved-upon conception. While thus in the Science of Knowledge there are two utterly distinct series of mental activity—that of the Ego, which the philosopher observes, and that of the observations of the philosopher—all other philosophical systems have only _one_ series of thinking, viz: that of the thoughts of the philosopher, for his object is not introduced as thinking at all. One of the chief grounds of so many objections to and misunderstandings of the Science of Knowledge lies in this: that these two series of thinking have not been held apart, or that what belonged to the one has been taken to belong to the other. This error occurred because Philosophy was held to consist only of one series. The act of one who produces a work of art is most certainly—since his object is not active—the appearance itself; but the description of him who has undertaken an experiment, is not the appearance itself, but the conception thereof.[1] After this preliminary remark, the further application whereof we shall examine in the course of our article, let us now ask: how does the Science of Knowledge proceed to solve its problem? The question it will have to answer, is, as we well know, the following: Whence comes the system of those representations which are accompanied by the feeling of necessity? Or, how do we to come claim objective validity for what is only subjective? Or, since objective validity is generally characterized as _being_, how do we come to accept a being? Now, since this question starts from a reflection that returns into itself—starts from the observation, that the immediate object of consciousness is after all merely consciousness itself,—it seems clear enough that the question can speak of no other being than of a being for us. It would be indeed a complete contradiction, to mistake it for a question concerning some being which had no relation to our consciousness. Nevertheless, the philosophers of our philosophical age are of all things most apt to plunge into such absurd contradictions.