Note 287 — Chapter X · (continued 2)

It must be noticed, in justice to what was said above on page 274 ff., that neither Kant nor his successors anywhere discriminate between the presence of the apperceiving Ego to the combined object, and the awareness by that Ego of its own presence and of its distinctness from what it apperceives. That the Object must be known to something which thinks, and that it must be known to something which thinks that it thinks, are treated by them as identical necessities,—by what logic, does not appear. Kant tries to soften the jump in the reasoning by saying the thought of itself on the part of the Ego need only be potential—"the 'I think' must be capable of accompanying all other knowledge"—but a thought which is only potential is actually no thought at all, which practically gives up the case.