and there is no reality anywhere except in the region of consciousness.
Nature is seen only as it is imaged in the mirror within; and to us it
is a mere phantasmagoria, a series of phenomena, a succession of
thoughts. "The sum total," says Fichte, "is this; there is absolutely
nothing permanent, either without me or within me, but only an unceasing
change. I know absolutely nothing of any existence, not even of my own.
I myself know nothing, and am nothing. Images there are; they constitute
all that apparently exists; and what they know of themselves is after
the manner of images; images that pass and vanish without there being
aught to witness their transition; that consist, in fact, of the images
of images, without significance and without an aim. I myself am one of
these images; nay, I am not even thus much, but only a confused image of
images. All reality is converted into a marvellous dream, without a life
to dream of, and without a mind to dream,--into a dream made up only of
a dream itself. Perception is a dream; thought--the source of all
existence, and all the reality which I imagine to myself of _my_
existence, of my power, of my destination--is the dream of that
dream."[136]

The tendency of such speculations as these towards universal Skepticism,
or even absolute Nihilism, with the exception only of certain fleeting
phenomena of Consciousness, is too apparent to require any formal proof;
and it must be equally evident that they contradict some of the most
universal and deeply-rooted convictions of the human mind. The ultimate
ground of every system of Idealism which excludes the knowledge of an
external world must be one or other of these two assumptions, or a
combination of both: either, that our knowledge cannot extend beyond the
range of consciousness, which takes cognizance only of ideas, or of
subjective mental states; or that any attempt to extend it beyond these
limits, so as to embrace external objects as really existing, can only
be successful on this condition,--that we _prove_, by reasoning from the
subjective to the objective, that there is a necessary _logical_
connection between the state of the one and the reality of the other.
Each of these assumptions is equally groundless. It is true that
consciousness, strictly so called, takes cognizance only of what passes
within; it is not true that consciousness, in this restricted sense, is
commensurate with our entire knowledge. It is true that we acq