is both scientifically and practically satisfactory,
this explanation itself needs explaining. Realism and idealism, like
natural impulse and moral will in the sphere of action, are both grounded
in reason. But idealism is the true standpoint, because it is able to
comprehend and explain the opposing theory, while the converse is not the
case.

[Footnote 1: Cf. O. Liebmann (_Ueber den individuellen Beweis fuer die
Freiheit des Willens p, 131. 1866)_ "Here we discover the noteworthy point
where theoretical and practical philosophy actually pass over into each
other. For this principle results: In order to carry out the individual
proof for the freedom of the will, I must do my duty."]

The nature, the goal, and the methods of the Science of Knowledge have now
been determined. It is genuine, thoroughgoing idealism, which raises the
Kantian philosophy to the rank of an evident science by deducing its
premises from a first principle which is immediately certain, and by
removing the twofold dualism of intuition and thought, of knowledge and
volition, viz., by proving both contraries acts of one and the same ego.
While Reinhold had sought a supreme truth as a fundamental principle of
unity, without which the doctrine of knowledge would lack the systematic
form essential to science, while Beck had interpreted the spirit of the
Kantian philosophy in an idealistic sense, and Jacobi had demanded the
elimination of the thing in itself, all these desires combined are
fulfilled in Fichte's doctrine, and at the same time the results of the
Critique of Reason are given that evidence which Aenesidemus-Schulze had
missed in them. As an answer to the question, "How is knowledge brought
about?" (as well the knowledge of common sense as that given in the
particular sciences), "how is experience possible?", and as a construction
of common consciousness as this manifests itself in life and in the
particular sciences, Fichteanism adopts the name _Science of Knowledge_,
being distinguished from the particular sciences by the fact that they
discuss the voluntary, and it the necessary, representations or actions of
the spirit. (The representation of a triangle or a circle is a free one, it
may be omitted; the representation of space in general is a necessary one,
from which it is impossible for us to abstract.) How does intelligence
come to have sensations, to intuit space and time, and to form just such
categories (thing and property, cause an