What, then, is this object? That which the understanding _adds_ to the appearance, _a mere thought_. Now, the object affects—i. e. _something which is a mere thought affects_. What does this mean? If I have but a spark of logic, it means simply: it affects in so far as it is; hence _it is only thought as affecting_. Let us now see what Kant means when he speaks about the “power to obtain representations by the manner in which objects affect us.” Since we only _think_ the affection itself, we doubtless only think likewise that which is common to the affection. Or: if you posit an object with the thought that it has affected you, you think yourself _in this case affected_; and if you think that this occurs in respect to _all_ the objects of your perception, you think yourself as _liable to be affected generally_—or, in other words, you ascribe to yourself, _through this your thinking_, receptivity or sensuousness. But do we not thus assume, after all, _affection_ to explain knowledge? Let me state the difference in one word: it is true, all our knowledge proceeds from _an affection_, but not an affection _through an object_. This is Kant’s doctrine, and that of the Science of Knowledge. As Mr. Beck has overlooked this important point, and as Reinhold does not call sufficient attention to that which makes the positing of a non-Ego possible, I consider it proper to explain the matter in a few words. In doing so I shall use my own terminology, and not Kant’s, because I naturally have my own more at my command. When I posit myself, I posit myself as a limited; in consequence of the contemplation of my self-positing, I am finite. This, my limitedness—since it is the condition which makes my self-positing possible—is an original limitedness. Somebody might wish to explain this still further, and either deduce the limitedness of myself as the reflected, from my necessary limitedness as the reflecting; which would result in the statement: I am finite to myself, because I can think only the finite;—or he might explain the limitedness of the reflecting from that of the reflected, which would result in the statement: I can think only the finite, because I am finite. But such an explanation would explain nothing, for I am originally neither the reflecting nor the reflected, but _both in their union_; which union I cannot think, it is true, because I separate, in thinking, the reflecting from the reflected. All limitedness is, by its very conception, a _determined_, and not a general limitedness.