Note 8 — THE JOURNAL OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY. Vol. I. 1867. No. 3.

Here is the corner stone of Kant’s realism. I must think something as thing in itself, i. e. as independent of me, the empirical, whenever I occupy the standpoint of the empirical; and because I must think so, I never become conscious of this activity in my thinking, since it is not free. Only when I occupy the standpoint of philosophy can I draw the conclusion that I am active in this thinking.