[152] Aristot., "De anima," iii. 8. "In a certain sense the intellect is all that exists." (Tr.'s Add.)
The dispute between Realism and Idealism, which appeared for the last time in the dispute between the Dogmatists and Kantians, or between Ontology and Metaphysics on the one hand and Transcendental Æsthetic and Transcendental Logic on the other, arose out of the misapprehension of this relation and was based upon its misapprehension with reference to the First and Third Classes of representations as established by me, just as the mediæval dispute between Realists and Nominalists rested upon the misapprehension of this relation with reference to the Second Class.
According to what has preceded, the Subject of knowledge can never be known; it can never become Object or representation. Nevertheless, as we have not only an outer self-knowledge (in sensuous perception), but an inner one also; and as, on the other hand, every knowledge, by its very nature, presupposes a knower and a known, what is known within us as such, is not the knower, but the willer, the Subject of Volition: the Will. Starting from knowledge, we may assert that "I know" is an analytical, "I will," on the contrary, a synthetical, and moreover an _à posteriori_ proposition, that is, it is given by experience--in this case by inner experience (_i.e._, in Time alone). In so far therefore the Subject of volition would be an Object for us. Introspection always shows us to ourselves as _willing_. In this _willing_, however, there are numerous degrees, from the faintest wish to passion, and I have often shown[153] that not only all our emotions, but even all those movements of our inner man, which are subsumed under the wide conception of feeling, are states of the will.
[153] See "Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik," p. 11, and in several other places.
Now, the identity of the willing with the knowing Subject, in virtue of which the word "I" includes and designates both, is the _nodus_[154] of the Universe, and therefore inexplicable. For we can only comprehend relations between Objects; but two Objects never can be one, excepting as parts of a whole. Here, where the Subject is in question, the rules by which we know Objects are no longer applicable, and actual identity of the knower with what is known as willing--that is, of Subject and Object--is _immediately given_. Now, whoever has clearly realized the utter impossibility of explaining this identity, will surely concur with me in calling it the miracle κατ' ἐξοχήν.