As a visual and conceptual metaphor, chaos represents a recurrent term in the critical writings of early German Romantics. Both Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), two prominent theorists of German Romanticism, define chaos as the condition for the possibility of all knowledge. Like a mirror-image that is neither essence nor representation, but an intangible and elusive form suspended in-between, a form necessary for self-(re)- cognition, chaos is an uncontainable and unrepresentable presence that is a precondition of any form of human cognition. Schlegel speculates that chaos may be the first, unconditional principle of system construction, a possible nickname for Fichte's “Ich” (self): “Self [Ich] and not-self [Nicht-Ich] perhaps identical with chaos and system and with spirit and letter.” In other words, chaos designates a higher metaphysics, an originary consciousness prior to systematic thought. In Schlegel's analogic formula, then, chaos corresponds to the first proposition of Fichte's analytic philosophy. As an absolute (spirit), chaos is unrepresentable and suprasensible.