_What_ acting may be, can only be _contemplated_, not developed from and through conceptions; but that which this contemplation contains is _comprehended_ by the mere opposition of pure _being_. Acting is not being, and being is not acting. Mere conception affords no other determination for each link; their real essence is only discovered in contemplation. Now this whole procedure of the philosopher appears to _me_, at least, very possible, very easy, and even natural; and I can scarcely conceive how it can appear otherwise to my readers, and how they can see in it anything mysterious and marvellous. Every one, let us hope, can think _himself_. He will also, let us hope, learn that by being required to thus think himself he is required to perform an act, dependent upon his own activity, an internal act; and that if he realizes this demand, if he really affects himself through self-activity, he also most surely _acts_ thus. Let us further hope that he will be able to distinguish this kind of acting from its _opposite_, the acting whereby he thinks external objects, and that he will find in the latter sort of thinking the thinking and the thought to be opposites, (the activity, therefore, tending upon something distinct from itself,) while in the former thinking both were one and the same, (and hence the activity a return into itself.) He will comprehend, it is to be hoped, that—since the thought of himself arises _only_ in this manner, (an opposite thinking producing a quite different thought)—the thought of himself is nothing but the thought of this act, and the word Ego nothing but the designation of this act—that Ego and an _into itself returning activity_ are completely identical conceptions. He will understand, let us hope, that if he but for the present problematically presupposes with transcendental Idealism that all consciousness rests upon and is dependent upon self-consciousness, he must also _think_ that return into itself as preceding and conditioning all other acts of consciousness; indeed as the primary act of the subject; and, since there is nothing for him which is not in his consciousness, and since everything else in his consciousness is conditioned by this act, and therefore cannot condition the act in the same respect,—as an act, utterly unconditioned and hence absolute _for him_; and he will thus further understand, that the _above problematical presupposition_ and this _thinking of the Ego as originally posited through itself_, are again quite identical; and that hence transcendental Idealism, if it proceeds systematically, can proceed in no other manner than it does in the Science of Knowledge.