He now admitted what, if he had not denied, he had overlooked before, an essential reality as the substratum both of the _Ego_ and _Non-ego;_ a reality of which all things, whether within or without, are only so many "modes" or manifestations.

And it is at this point that his subjective Idealism passes into Pantheism, and that we mark the close affinity between his speculations and those of Spinoza.

There is, in some respects, a wide difference between the two; Spinoza assumed, Fichte denied, the existence of matter; the former affirmed Substance to be the absolute and infinite Essence; the latter proclaimed a spiritual universe, whose essence was the infinite reason, or the Divine idea: but still, with these and other points of difference, there existed a real, radical affinity between the two systems, that of Fichte, not less than that of Spinoza, being based on _the identity of existence and thought_; and both systems being directed to show that there is but one Absolute Being, of which all phenomena, whether material or mental, are only so many modes or manifestations.
3.

The philosophy of "the absolute," as applied in support of German Pantheism, depends on the doctrine of "Identity," and must stand or fall along with it.[140] The "absolute" is described as being at once _ideal_ and _real_, pure _being_ and pure _thought_, and as developing itself in a great variety of forms.

The philosophy of the "absolute" is represented as the _only science_, properly so called: it is assumed that there can be no science of the finite, the variable, the contingent, the relative, but only of the absolute, the unchangeable, and the infinite.