Each individual imagines that he can exist, live, think, and act for himself, and believes that he himself is the thinking principle of his thoughts;… - Johann Gottlieb Fichte

That I should by necessity be either wise and good, or foolish or vicious, without having in one case or the other merit or fault — this it was that filled me with aversion and horror.The determination of my actions by a cause out of myself, whose manifestations were again determined by other causes — this it was from which I so violently revolted.The freedom which was not mine, but that of a foreign power, and, in that, only a conditional, half freedom — this it was with which I could not rest satisfied. I myself — that which in this system only appears as the manifestation of a higher existence, I will be independent, — will be something, not by another or through another, but of myself.

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

As Being and Life are one and the same, so are Death and Nothingness one and the same. But there is no real Death and no real Nothing ness, as we have already said. There is, however, an Apparent Life, and this is the mixture of life and death, of being and nothingness.