 To recapitulate, briefly: First, we must abandon the mere prejudice that the external world exists complete and independent of our minds, and that our thinking is merely a “useless appendage” which merely reproduces the contents of the world, as a fruitless activity. Nor should we fall into the trap of absolute idealism, which so reduces the world of things that they can easily be fitted into the formal categories of our thinking (that is, reduce metaphysics to logic). The right way was indicated by Fichte: our minds are not for the mere cognitive reproduction of meaningless things, but rather a “world” only appears to us in order to serve as a stage inducing us to meaningful action. But action characterizes only the subjective side of things: on the other side, we must identify the moral good, and our action becomes, hence, merely a means of realizing this end.