So far as this goes, the teacher of Idealism shows his assertion to be contained in immediate consciousness. But that this necessary manner is the fundamental law of all reason, that from it the whole system of our necessary representations, not only of a world and the determinedness and relations of objects, but also of ourselves, as free and practical beings acting under laws, can be deduced. All this is a mere presupposition, which can only be proven by the actual deduction, which deduction is therefore the real business of the teacher. In realizing this deduction, he proceeds as follows: _He shows that the first fundamental law which was discovered in immediate consciousness, is not possible, unless a second action is combined with it, which again is not possible without a third action; and so on, until the conditions of the First are completely exhausted, and itself is now made perfectly comprehensible in its possibility_. The teacher’s method is a continual progression from the conditioned to the condition. The condition becomes again conditioned, and its condition is next to be discovered. If the presupposition of Idealism is correct, and if no errors have been made in the deduction, the last result, as containing all the conditions of the first act, must contain the system of all necessary representations, or the total experience;—a comparison, however, which is not instituted in Philosophy itself, but only after that science has finished its work. For Idealism has not kept this experience in sight, as the preknown object and result, which it should arrive at; in its course of proceeding it knows nothing at all of experience, and does not look upon it; it proceeds from its starting point according to its rules, careless as to what the result of its investigations might turn out to be. The right angle, from which it has to draw its straight line, is given to it; is there any need of another point to which the line should be drawn? Surely not; for all the points of its line are already given to it with the angle. A certain number is given to you. You suppose that it is the product of certain factors. All you have to do is to search for the product of these factors according to the well-known rules. Whether that product will agree with the given number, you will find out, without any difficulty, as soon as you have obtained it. The given number is the total experience; those factors are: the part of immediate consciousness which was discovered, and the laws of Thinking; the multiplication is the Philosophizing. Those who advise you, while philosophizing, also to keep an eye upon experience, advise you to change the factors a little, and to multiply falsely, so as to obtain by all means corresponding numbers; a course of proceeding as dishonest as it is shallow. In so far as those final results of Idealism are viewed as such, as consequences of our reasoning, they are what is called the