accidence of the World; and hence the logical dogmatist is necessarily also materialist. He can only be refuted from the postulate of the freedom and independence of the _Ego_; but this is precisely what he denies. Neither can the dogmatist refute the Idealist. The principle of the former, the Thing in itself, is nothing, and has no reality, as its defenders themselves must admit, except that which it is to receive from the fact that experience can only be explained by it. But this proof the Idealist annihilates by explaining experience in another manner, hence by denying precisely what dogmatism assumes. Thus the Thing in itself becomes a complete Chimera; there is no further reason why it should be assumed; and with it the whole edifice of dogmatism tumbles down. From what we have just stated, is moreover evident the complete irreconcilability of both systems; since the _results_ of the one destroy those of the other. Wherever their union has been attempted the members would not fit together, and somewhere an immense gulf appeared which could not be spanned. If any one were to deny this he would have to prove the possibility of such a union—of a union which consists in an everlasting composition of Matter and Spirit, or, which is the same, of Necessity and Liberty. Now since, as far as we can see at present, both systems appear to have the same speculative value, but since both cannot stand together, nor yet either convince the other, it occurs as a very interesting question: What can possibly tempt persons who comprehend this—and to comprehend it is so very easy a matter—to prefer the one over the other; and why skepticism, as the total renunciation of an answer to this problem, does not become universal? The dispute between the Idealist and the Dogmatist is, in reality, the question, whether the independence of the _Ego_ is to be sacrificed to that of the Thing, or _vice versa_? What, then, is it, which induces sensible men to decide in favor of the one or the other? The philosopher discovers from this point of view—in which he must necessarily place himself, if he wants to pass for a philosopher, and which, in the progress of Thinking, every man necessarily occupies sooner or later,—nothing farther _than that he is forced to represent to himself_ both: that he is free, and that there are determined things outside of him. But it is impossible for man to stop at this thought; the thought of a representation is but a half-thought, a broken off fragment of a thought; something must be thought and added to it, as corresponding with the representation independent of it. In other words: the representation cannot exist alone by itself, it is only something in connection with something else, and in itself it is nothing. This necessity of thinking it is, which forces one from that point of view to the question: What is the ground of the representations? or, which is exactly the same, What is that which corresponds with them?