From the possibility of an Ego, we have thus deduced the necessity of a _general limitedness_ of the Ego. But the _determinedness_ of this limitedness cannot be deduced, since it is, as we have seen, that which conditions all Egoness. Here, therefore, all deduction is at an end. This _determinedness_ appears as the absolutely accidental, and furnishes the _merely empirical_ of our knowledge. It is this determinedness, for instance, by virtue of which I am, amongst all possible rational beings, a _man_, and amongst all men this _particular_ person, &c., &c. This, my limitation, in its determinedness, manifests itself as a limitation of my practical power (here philosophy is therefore driven from the theoretical to the practical sphere); and the immediate perception of this limitation is a _feeling_ (I prefer to use this word instead of Kant’s “_sensation_,” for feeling only becomes sensation by being related in thinking to an object); for instance, the feeling of sweet, red, cold, &c. To forget this original feeling, leads to a bottomless transcendental idealism, and to an incomplete philosophy, which cannot explain the simply sensible predicates of objects. Now, the endeavor to explain this original feeling from the causality of a _something_, is the dogmatism of the Kantians, which I have just shown up, and which they would like to put on Kant’s shoulders. This, their something, is the everlasting thing _per se_. All _transcendental_ explanation, on the contrary, stops at the immediate feeling, from the reason just pointed out. It is true, the _empirical_ Ego, which transcendental idealism observes, explains this feeling to itself by the law, “No limitation without a limiting;” and thus, through contemplation of the limiting, produces extended matter, of which it now, as of its ground, predicates the merely subjective sensation of feeling; and it is only by virtue of this synthesis that the Ego makes itself an object. The continued analysis and the continued explanation of its own condition, give to the Ego its own system of a universe; and the observation of the laws of this explanation gives to the philosopher his science. It is here that Kant’s _Realism_ is based, but his Realism is a _transcendental idealism_. This whole determinedness, and hence also the total of feelings which it makes possible, is to be regarded as _a priori_—i. e. absolutely, without any action of our own—determined. It is Kant’s _receptivity_, and a particular of this receptivity is an _affection_. Without it, consciousness is unexplainable.