[Literature] Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Facts of Consciousness #6/65

3. We have here various new creations:

Firstly, there is as the ground of this newly-arisen consciousness of the image a real self-liberating, a self-liberating on the part of the life of knowledge itself. The determined consciousness, here of the image as the being of a determined freedom, is nothing but the result of the tearing itself loose from its chains on the part of free life, is simply the result of this determined higher life-development on the part of freedom itself. That standing and permanent being of freedom, which now is consciousness, is absolutely created through freedom. Hence this act appears even in consciousness as a gathering together and an exertion.

Secondly, there arises here the knowledge of an image as something altogether new. Did not, then, that external perception which preceded the reflection also contain an image, or not? If the life of consciousness is altogether free, as we have seen it to be, that external perception could surely have entered it only through its own freedom, and thus it seems that the image in external perception must also be always recognized as an image created by freedom. How to think such a thought we here lack even expression. But so much we can say, that the image of external perception could not have been created by a freedom of actualknowledge, since actual knowledge presupposes it as its starting-point, and that hence it is proper to say: external perception did contain not an image but a thing.

But this is merely preliminary. Let us now enter upon a more profound description of the freedom, arisen through this new life-development, in its relation to the image.

In external perception we had, firstly, a limitation of the external sense through a determined quality; for instance, of a red color. Hence the freedom opposed to it, the liberation from that confinedness, must consist in a power to freely produce such images of qualities; for instance, an image of not only a red color, but also a yellow color, &c.: a free power of imaging, a power of imagination in regard to sensuous qualities. But since an image of a quality is not possible without a previous actual affection through the external sense, and since a good supply is necessary for a free oppositing of many such images, it follows that life must have existed in a condition of mere perception for some length of time in order to be able to rise to such a freedom of imagination.

In external perception we had, secondly, a contemplation of extension, and a contemplation of the thing perceived which was confined precisely to this figure, this size, and this location in universal space. Hence the liberation from this sort of confinedness must consist in this, that the imagination, though always confined to extension in general, has a powder to freely imagine figure, size, and location.

External perception involved, finally, an objectivating thinking. This, while remaining, on the whole, the same—namely, in that the product of imagination is also objectivated or externalized—must be changed so (the limitation of the external sense in general having vanished) that it is posited as the thinking of an object not actual and in fact existing, but merely imagined and freely thought.

Thus the freedom of imagination is actually a real liberation of spiritual life. For, while we wake, our external sense is still determined and affected by that power which as yet is to us unknown; and it is only imagination which lifts us above this affection through the senses, and makes us capable of withdrawing ourselves from its influences by withdrawing our perception and surrendering ourselves exclusively to the productions of the imagination, thus freely creating an entirely different sequence of time, which has no connection whatever with the time-sequence' of sensuous development. In children, during the first years of their lives, this power of abstracting from sensuous impressions doubtless does not exist, and hence also not the power of free imagination. In grown-up persons the strength of this power of abstraction has various grades, according to the standard of their spiritual development. Archimedes was not disturbed in his geometrical constructions by the tumult of a conquered city; but it is a different question whether he would not have been disturbed had a stroke of lightning flashed down near him.

Let us now investigate this still more profoundly by rising from the determined external characteristics of this new freedom to its inner form.

1. In external perception the life of knowledge has causality through its mere being; and, moreover, a determined causality, since causality in general is nothing real, but a mere thought.