Now I know very well that Kant has by no means _built up_ such a system; for if he had, the author of the Science of Knowledge would not have undertaken that work, but would have chosen another branch of human knowledge for his field. I know that he has by no means _proven_ his categories to be conditions of self-consciousness; I know that he has simply asserted them so to be; that he has still less deduced time and space, and that which in original consciousness is _inseparable_ from them—the matter which fills time and space—as such conditions; since of these he has not even expressly stated, as he has done in the case of the categories, that they are such conditions. But I believe I know quite as well that Kant has _thought_ such a system; that all his writings and utterances are fragments and results of this system, and that his assertions get meaning and intention only through this presupposition. Whether he did not himself think this system with sufficient clearness and definiteness to enable him to utter it for others; or whether he did, indeed, think it thus clearly and merely _did not want_ so to utter it, as some remarks would seem to indicate, might, it seems to me, be left undecided; at least somebody else must investigate this matter, for I have never asserted anything on this point.[7] But, however such an investigation may result, this _merit_ surely belongs altogether to the great man; that he first of all consciously separated philosophy from external objects, and led that science into the Self. This is the spirit and the inmost soul of all his philosophy, and this also is the spirit and soul of the Science of Knowledge.