We need not in details consider the genesis of Reality from the action of the Ego. Substantially it is the same as that given by Fichte. An activity, which is at once self-limiting and superior to all limit, rises through stage to stage, from sensation and intuition, to reflection and intelligence, till it becomes the consciousness of a world of ob; ective reality. 'Give me,' says the transcendental philosopher, 'a nature with opposing activities, of which the one goes to infinity, and the other endeavours to behold itself in this infinity,--and from that I will show you intelligence arising with the whole system of its ideas[12].' In the first phase the 'ideal-real' world arises by the synthetic action of the 'productive intuition,' Ideas, as it were, live and move: they grow and build up: causality is neither a category nor a schema, but an intelligent 'form' which is also a force--an 'idée-force,' They are (in the Hegelian sense) 'Ideas,' i.e. neither merely objective nor merely subjective, but both at once. But such an ideal world is outside and beyond consciousness: it belongs to the same region as that higher Ego where there is no distinction between the Ego I am and the Ego I know. To follow the movement in this region needs a combination of mental vision and visual intellect, which Schelling has called the 'Intellectual Intuition.' It is a power which rising above the materialism of sense yet retains its realism; which, while intellectual, is free from abstractness. It is synthetic, and widely different from mere logical analysis. It is, in short, analogous to the artistic genius: it creates a quasi-objectivity, an ideal-reality, without which the mere words of the speculator are meaningless. By means of this 'organ,' philosophy can 'freely imitate and repeat the original series of actions in which the one "act" of self-consciousness is evolved[13].
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Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel's Philosophy — Part 97
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