Let no one be deceived by these opponents, if they adopt the language of idealism, and admitting with their lips the correctness of its views, protest that they know well enough that being is only to signify _being for us_. They are dogmatists. For every one who asserts that all thinking and consciousness must proceed from a being, makes being something primary; and it is this which constitutes dogmatism. By such a confusion of speech they but demonstrate the utter confusion of their conceptions; for what may a _being for us_ mean, which is, nevertheless, to be an original _not_-derived being? Who, then, are those “_we_,” for whom alone this being is? Are they _intelligences_ as such? Then the statement “there is something for the intelligence,” signifies, this something is represented by the intelligence; and the statement “it is _only_ for the intelligence,” signifies, it is _only_ represented. Hence the conception of a being, which, from a certain point of view, is to be independent of the representation, must, after all, be derived from the representation, since it is to be, only through it; and these men would, therefore, be more in harmony with the Science of Knowledge than they believed. Or are those “_we_” themselves things, original things, things in themselves? How, then, can anything be _for_ them; how can they even be for themselves, since the conception of a thing involves merely that it is, but not that the thing is _for itself_? What may the word _for_ signify to them? Is it, perhaps, but an innocent adornment which they have adopted for the sake of fashion? VIII. The Science of Knowledge has said, “It is not possible to abstract from the Ego.” This assertion may be regarded from two points of view—either from the standpoint of common consciousness, and then it means, “We never have another representation than that of ourselves; throughout our whole life, and in all moments of our life, we think only I, I, I, and nothing but I.” Or it may be viewed from the standpoint of the philosopher, and then it will have the following significance: “The Ego must necessarily be added in thought to whatever occurs in consciousness;” or as Kant expresses it, “All my representations must be thought as accompanied by—I think.” What nonsense were it to maintain the first interpretation to be the true one, and what wretchedness to refute it in that interpretation. But in the latter interpretation the assertion of the Science of Knowledge will doubtless be acceptable to every one who is but able to understand it; and if it had only been thus understood before, we should long ago have been rid of the thing _per se_, for it would have been seen that we are always the Thinking, whatever we may think, and that hence nothing can occur in us which is independent of us, because it all is necessarily related to our thinking. IX.