hing further in Kant's work. Considered as a system
Kant's expositions were incomplete; and, on his own confession, his aim
was not to furnish the science itself, but only the foundation and the
materials for it. Therefore, although the Kantian philosophy is established
as far as its inner content is concerned, there is still need of earnest
work to systematize the fragments and results which he gives into a firmly
connected and impregnable whole. The _Wissenschaftslehre_ takes this
completion of idealism for its mission. It cannot solve the problem by a
commentary on the Kantian writings, nor by the correction and addition of
particulars, but only by restoring the whole at a stroke. He alone finds
the truth who new creates it in himself, independently and in his own way.
Thus Fichte's system contains the same view of the matter as the critical
system--the author is aware, runs the preface to the programme, _On the
Concept of the Science of Knowledge_, 1794, "that he never will be able to
say anything at which Kant has not hinted, immediately or mediately,
more or less clearly, before him,"--but in his procedure he is entirely
independent of the Kantian exposition. We shall first raise the question,
What in the Kantian philosophy is in need of completion? and, secondly,
What method must be adopted in completing it?

Kant discusses the laws of intelligence when they are already applied to
objects, without enlightening us concerning the ground of these laws. He
derived the pure concepts (the laws of substantiality, of causality, etc.)
from (logic, and thus mediately from) experience instead of deducing
them from the nature of intelligence; similarly he never furnished
this deduction for the forms of intuition, space and time. In order to
understand that intelligence, and why intelligence, must act in just this
way (must think just by means of these categories), we must prove, and not
merely, with Kant, assert, that these functions or forms are really laws of
thought--or, what amounts to the same thing, that they are conditions of
self-consciousness. Again, even if it be granted that Kant has explained
the properties and relations of things (that they appear in space and time,
and that their accidents must be referred to substances), the question
still remains unanswered, Whence comes the matter which is taken up into
these forms? So long as the whole object is not made to arise before the
eyes of the thinker, dogmatism is n