 Despite this important stricture on the scope of transcendental philosophy, there remains much that can be demonstrated within the foundational portion of the Wissenschaftslehre. For example, it can be shown that the I could not become conscious of its own limits in the manner required for the possibility of any self-consciousness unless it also possessed an original and spontaneous ability to synthesize the finite and the infinite. In this sense, the Wissenschaftslehre deduces the power of productive imagination as an original power of the mind. Similarly, it can be shown that the I could not be “checked” in the manner required for the possibility of consciousness unless it possessed, in addition to its original “theoretical” power of productive imaginative, an equally original “practical” power of sheer willing, which, once “checked,” is immediately converted into a capacity for endless striving. The foundational portion of the Wissenschaftslehre thus also includes a deduction of the categorical imperative (albeit in a particularly abstract and morally empty form) and of the practical power of the I. For Fichte, therefore, “the primacy of the practical” means not simply that philosophy must recognize a certain autonomous sphere within which practical reason is efficacious and practical considerations are appropriate; instead, it implies something much stronger: namely, the recognition that, as Fichte puts it, “the practical power is the innermost root of the I” and thus that “our freedom itself is a theoretical determining principle of our world.” The Wissenschaftslehre as a whole can therefore be described as a massive effort to demonstrate that reason could not be theoretical if it were not also practical—at the same time, to be sure, that also demonstrates that reason could not be practical if were not also theoretical.