Who am I? Subject and object in one — contemplating and contemplated, thinking and thought of. As both must I have become what I am. - Johann Gottlieb Fichte

I know now that I shall. But all Actual Knowledge brings with it, by its formal nature, its schematised apposition; — although I now know of the Schema of God, yet I am not yet immediately this Schema, but I am only a Schema of the Schema. The required Being is not yet realised. I shall be. Who is this I? Evidently that which is, — the Ego gives in Intuition, the Individual. This shall be. What does its Being signify? It is given as a Principle in the World of Sense. Blind Instinct is indeed annihilated, and in its place there now stands the clearly perceived Shall. But the Power that at first set this Instinct in motion remains, in order that the Shall my now set it (the Power) in motion, and become its higher determining Principle. By means of this Power, I shall therefore, within its sphere, — the World of Sense, — produce and make manifest that which I recognise as my true Being in the Supersensuous World.

The Present Age, according to my view of it, stands in that Epoch which in my former lecture I named the THIRD, and which I characterized as the Epoch of Liberation—directly from the external ruling Authority, indirectly from the power of Reason as Instinct, and generally from Reason in any form; the Age of absolute indifference towards all truth, and of entire and unrestrained licentiousness:–the state of completed sinfulness.

Science raises itself above all Ages and all Times, embracing and apprehending the ONE UNCHANGING TIME as the higher source of all Ages and Epochs, and grasping that vast idea in its free, unbounded comprehension.