" And so I am a democrat! — And what is a demo crat? One who represents the democratic form of government as the only just one, and recommends its introduction? I should think, if he does this merely in his writings, that, even under a monarchical govern ment, the refutation of his error, if it be an error, might be left to other literary men. So long as he makes no direct attempt to overthrow the existing government and put his own scheme in its place, I do not see how his opinions can come before the judg ment-seat of the State, which takes cognizance of ac tions only. However, I know that my opponents think otherwise on this point. Let them think so if they choose; does the accusation then justly apply to me? — am I a democrat in the foregoing sense of that word? They may indeed have neither heard nor read anything about me, since they settled this idea in POLITICAL SPECULATIONS. 71 their minds and wrote " democrat" over my head in their imaginations. Let them look at my " Principles of Natural Law," vol. i. p. 189, &c. It is impossible to name any writer who has declared more decidedly, and on stronger grounds, against the democratic form of government as an absolutely illegitimate form. Let them make a fair extract from that book. They will find that I require a submission to law, a jurisdiction of law over the actions of the citizen, such as was never before demanded by any teacher of jurispru dence, and has never been attempted to be realized in any constitution. Most of the complaints which I have heard against this system have turned on the assertion that it derogated too much from the freedom (licentiousness and lawlessness) of men. I am thus far from preaching anarchy.
" But they do not attach a definite and scientific meaning to the word. If all the circumstances in which they use this expression were brought together, it might perhaps be possible to say what particular sense they annex to it; and it is quite possible that, in this sense, I may be a very decided democrat; — it is at least so far certain, that I would rather not be at all, than be the subject of caprice and not of law."
During the period of his residence at Zurich, how ever, Fichte's attention was occupied with another subject, more important to science and to his own future fame than his political speculations. This was the philosophical system on which his reputation chiefly rests. It would be altogether out of place in the present Memoir to enter at large upon a subject so vast and so profound, if indeed it might not prove altogether impossible to present, in any form intel ligible to the ordinary English reader, the results of these abstruse and difficult speculations. Yet the pe culiarities of Fichte's philosophical system are so inti mately bound up with the personal character of its author, that both lose something of their completeness when considered apart from each other. And it is principally with a view to illustrate the harmony be tween his life and his philosophy that an attempt is here made to point out some of its distinguishing features. As Fichte's system may be considered the complement of those which preceded it, we must view it in connexion with the more important of these.
The final results of the philosophy of Locke were two-fold. In France, the school of Condillac, imi tating the example of the English philosopher rather than following out his first principles, occupied itself exclusively with the phenomena of sensation, leaving out of sight the no less indisputable facts to which reflection is our sole guide. The consequence was a system of unmixed materialism, a deification of physi cal nature, and ultimately, avowed atheism. In Great Britain, the philosophy of experience was more justly treated: both sources of human knowledge which Locke indicated at the outset of his inquiry — although in the body of his essay he analyzed one of them only — were recognised by his followers in his own land, until Berkeley resolved the phenomena of sensation into those of reflection, and the same method which in France led to materialism, in England produced a system of intellectual idealism. Berkeley's principles were pushed to the extreme by Hume, who, applying MODERN PHILOSOPHY HUME REID. 73 to the phenomena of reflection precisely the same analysis which Berkeley applied to those of sensation, demolished the whole fabric of human knowledge, and revealed, under the seemingly substantial foundations on which men had hitherto built their faith, a yawning gulf of impenetrable obscurity and scepticism. Feeling, thought, nay consciousness itself, became but fleeting phantasms without any abiding subject in which they could inhere.
It may be safely affirmed that, notwithstanding the outcry which greeted the publication of the " Essay of Human Nature," and the senseless virulence which still loads the memory of its author with abuse, none of his critics have hitherto succeeded in detecting a fallacy in his main argument. Admit his premises, and you cannot consistently stop short of his conclu sions. The Aristotelian theory of perception, which up to this period none had dared to impugn, having thus led, by a strictly necessary movement, to the last ex treme of scepticism, the reaction which followed, under Reid and the school of Common Sense, was naturally founded on a denial of the doctrine of representation, and on a more close analysis of our knowledge of the external world, and of the processes by which we acquire that knowledge. It has thus occurred that the dis tinguished philosophers of the Scotch School, although deserving of all gratitude for their acute investigations into the intellectual and moral phenomena of man, have yet confined themselves exclusively to the depart ment of psychological analysis, and have thrown little direct light on the higher questions of metaphy sical speculation. This was reserved for the modern school of Germany, of which Kant may be considered the head. Stewart, although contemporary with the philosopher of Konigsberg, seems to have had not only an imperfect, but a quite erroneous, conception of his doctrines.
Kant admitted the validity of Hume's conclusions respecting our knowledge of external things, on the premises from which they were deduced. He admitted that the human intellect could not go beyond itself, could not furnish us with any other than subjective knowledge. We are indeed constrained to assume the existence of an outward world, to which we refer the impressions which come to us through our senses, but these impressions having to pass through the prism of certain inherent faculties or " categories" of the understanding, by which their original character is modified, or perhaps altogether changed, we are not entitled to draw from them any conclusions as to the nature of the source whence they emanate. Our knowledge of the outward world is thus limited to the bare admission of its existence, and stands in the same relation to the outward world itself as the impressions conveyed to the eye through a kaleidescope do to the collection of objects within the instrument. But is the outward world, which we are thus forced to abandon to doubt, the only reality for man! Do we not find in consciousness something more than a cognitive fa culty? We find besides, Will, Freedom, Self-determi nation; and here is a world altogether independent of sense, and of the knowledge of outward things. Free dom is the root, the very ground-work of our being; free determination is the most intimate and certain fact in our nature. To this freedom we find an abso lute law addressed, — the unconditional law of morality.
MODERN PHILOSOPHY KANT. 75 Here, then, in the practical world of duty, of free obedience, of moral determination, we have the true world of man, in which the moral agent is the only existence, the moral act the only reality. In this super-sensual world we regain, by the practical move ment of Reason, our convictions of infinite and absolute existence, from the knowledge of which, as objective realities, we are shut out by the subjective limitations of the Understanding. Between the world of sense and the world of morality, and indissolubly connected with both, stands the aesthetic world, or the system of relations we hold with external things through our ideas of the Beautiful, the Sublime, &c.; which thus forms the bond of union between the sensible and spiritual worlds. These three worlds exhaust the ele ments of human consciousness.
But while Kant, by throwing the bridge of aesthetic feeling over the chasm which separates the sensible from the purely spiritual world, established an outward communication between them, he did not attempt to reconcile — he maintained the impossibility of recon ciling — their essential opposition. So far as the ob jective world is concerned, his system is one of mere negation. It is in this reconciliation, — in tracing this opposition to its source, — in the establishment of the unity of the sensible and spiritual worlds, that Fichte's " Wissenschaftslehre " follows out and completes the philosophical system of which Kant had laid the foun dation. In it, for the first time, philosophy becomes, not a theory of knowledge, but knowledge itself; for in it the apparent division of the subject thinking from the object thought of is abolished, by penetrating to the primitive unity out of which this opposition arises.
The origin of this opposition, and the principle by which it is to be reconciled, must be sought for in the nature of the thinking subject itself. Our own consciousness is the source of all our positive and certain knowledge. It precedes, and is the ground of, all other knowledge; nay it embraces within itself everything which we truly know. The facts of our own mental experience alone possess true reality for us; whatever is more than these, however probable as an inference, does not belong to the sphere of know ledge. Here, then, in the depths of the mind itself, we must look for a fixed and certain starting point for philosophy. Fichte finds such a starting point in the proposition or axiom A = A. This proposition is at once recognised by every one as absolutely and uncon ditionally true. But in affirming this proposition we also affirm our own existence, for the affirmation itself is our own mental act. The proposition may there fore be changed into Ego = Ego. But this affirmation itself postulates the existence of something not in cluded in its subject, or in other words, out of the affirmative axiom A=A arises the negative proposition — A not = A, or as before, Non-Ego not = Ego. In this act of negation the mind assumes the existence of a Non-Ego opposed to itself, and forming a limitation to its own existence. This opposition occurs in every act of consciousness; and in the voluntary and spon taneous limits which the mind thus sets to its own activity, it creates for itself an objective world.
The fundamental character of finite being is thus the supposition of itself (thesis'), and of something opposed to itself (anti-thesis}; which two conceptions are reciprocal, mutually imply each other, and are hence identical (synthesis.} The Ego affirms the Non-Ego, and is affirmed in it; the two conceptions are indissoluble, nay they are but one conception modi fied by different attitudes of the mind. But as these attitudes are in every case voluntarily assumed by the Ego, it is itself the only real existence, and the Non-Ego, as well as the varied aspects attributed to it, are but different forms of the activity of the Ego. Here, then, Eealism and Idealism coincide in the identity of the subject and object of thought, and the absolute principle of knowledge is discovered in the mind itself.
But in thus establishing the Non-Ego as a limit to its own free activity, the Ego does not perform a mere arbitrary act. It constantly sets before it, as its aim or purpose, the realization of its own nature: and this effort after self-development is the root of our practical existence. This effort is limited by the Non-Ego, — the creation of the Ego itself for the pur poses of its own moral life. Hence the practical Ego must regard itself as acted upon by influences from without, as restrained by something other than itself. — in one word, as finite. But this limitation, or in other words the Non-Ego, is a mere creation of the Ego, without true life or existence in itself, and only assumed as a field for the self-development of the Ego. Let us suppose this assumed obstacle removed or laid aside, and the original activity of the Ego left without limitation or restraint. In this case, the finite indivi duality of the Ego disappears with the limitations which produce it, and we ascend to the first principle of a spiritual organization in which the multiform pheno mena of individual life are embraced in an Infinite all- H 2 78 MEMOIR OF F1CHTE.
comprehending Unity, — " an Absolute Ego, in whose self-determination all the Xon-Ego is determined."
Fichte has been accused of teaching a system of mere Egoism, of elevating the subjective personality of man into the place of God. JS"o one who is acquainted with any of his later writings can fail to see the falsity of this charge, but as it has been alleged that in these works he abandoned the principles which he advocated in earlier life, it may not be unimportant to show that the charge is utterly groundless, and inapplicable even to the very first outlines of his philosophical theory. The following passages occur in a letter to Jacobi, dated 30th August 1795, when transmitting to him a copy of the first edition of the Wissenschaftslehre, and seem to be quite conclusive as to the fact that the Absolute Ego of his earlier teaching may be scientifi cally, as well as morally, identified with the highest results of his later doctrines.
jftrftte to jflacobi.
" I have read your writings again this summer during the leisure of a charming country residence, — read them again and again, and I am everywhere, but especially in "Allwill," astonished at the striking simi larity of our philosophical convictions. The public will scarcely believe in this similarity, and perhaps you yourself may not readily do so, for in that case it would be required of you to deduce the details of a whole system from the uncertain outlines of an introduc tion. You are indeed well known to be a Realist, and I to be a transcendental Idealist more severe than even Kant himself; — for with him there is still recognised a multiform object of experience, whilst I maintain, in plain language, that this object is itself produced by us through our own creative power. Permit me to come to an understanding with you on this point.
" My Absolute Ego is obviously not the Individual; — although this has been maintained by offended courtiers and chagrined philosophers, in order to im pute to me the scandalous doctrine of practical Ego ism. But the Individual must be deduced from the Absolute Ego. Thus the Wissenschaftslehre enters at once into the domain of natural right. A finite being — as may be shown by deduction — can only conceive of itself as a sensuous existence in a sphere of sensuous existences, over one portion of which — (a portion which can have no beginning) — it exercises causality, and with another portion of which — (a por tion to which we ascribe the notion of causality), — it stands in relations of reciprocal influence; — and in so far it is called an Individual: (the conditions of Indi viduality are Rights.} So surely as it affirms itself as an Individual, so surely does it affirm such a sphere; for both are reciprocal notions. When we regard our selves as Individuals — in which case we always look upon ourselves as living, and not as philosophizing or poetizing, — we take our stand upon that point of view which I call practical; — that of the Absolute Ego being speculative. Henceforward, from this practical point of view there is a world for us, independent of ourselves, which we can only modify; and thus too the Pure Ego, which does not disappear from this region, is necessarily placed without us, objectified, and called God. How could we otherwise have arrived at the qualities which we ascribe to God, and deny to our selves, had we not first discovered them in ourselves.
and only denied them to ourselves in one particular respect — i.e. as Individuals? This practical point of view is the domain of Realism; by the deduction and recognition of this point from the side of speculation itself arises that complete reconciliation of philosophy with the Common Sense of man, which is promised in the Wissenschaftslehre.
" To what end, then, is the speculative point of view, and with it all philosophy, if it belong not to life? Had humanity never tasted of this forbidden fruit, it might indeed have done without philosophy. But there is implanted within us a desire to gaze upon this region which transcends all individuality, not by a mere reflected light, but in direct and immediate vision; and the first man who raised a question con cerning the existence of God, broke through the re strictive limits, shook humanity to its deepest founda tions, and set it in a controversy with itself wlu'ch is not yet adjusted, and which can only be adjusted by a bold advance to that highest region of thought from which the speculative and practical points of view are seen to be united. We begin to philosophize from presumption, and thus become bankrupt of our inno cence; we see our nakedness, and then philosophize from necessity for our redemption.
" But do I not philosophize as confidently with you, and write as openly, as if I were already assured of your interest in my philosophy? Indeed my heart tells me that I do not deceive myself in assuming the existence of this interest.
" Allwill gives the transcendental Idealists the hope of an enduring peace and even of a kind of alliance, if they will but content themselves with finding their own limits, and making these secure. I believe that I have now fulfilled this condition. If I have moreover, from this supposed hostile land, guaranteed and se cured to Realism itself its own proper domain, then I may lay claim not merely to a kind of alliance, but to an alliance of the completest kind."
Still more decisive on this point is the following passage from a review of Schulz's " ^Enesidemus," in the Literatur Zeitung for 1794: — " In the Pure Ego, Reason is not practical, neither is it so in the Ego as Intelligence; it only becomes so by the effort of these to unite. That this principle must lie at the root of Kant's doctrine itself, although he has nowhere distinctly declared it; — further, how a practical philosophy arises through the representation of this hyper-physical effort by the intelligent Ego to itself, in its progressive ascent through the various steps which man must traverse in theoretical philoso phy, — this is not the place to show. Such an union, — an Ego in whose Self-determination all the I^on-Ego is determined (the Idea of God] — is the highest object of this effort. Such an effort, when the intelligent Ego conceives this object as something external to it self, is faith: — (Faith in God.} This effort can never cease, until after the attainment of its object; that is, Intelligence cannot regard as the last any moment of its existence in which this object has not yet been attained, — (Faith in an eternal existence.} In these ideas, however, there is nothing possible for us but Faith; — i.e. Intelligence has here no empirical per ception for its object, but only the necessary effort of the Ego; and throughout all Eternity nothing more than this can become possible. But this faith is by no means a mere probable opinion; on the contrary, it possesses, at least according to the testimony of our inmost convictions, the same degree of certainty with the immediately certain postulate '/ am,' — a certainty infinitely superior to all objective certainty, which can only become possible mediately, through the existence of the intelligent Ego. ^Enesidemus indeed demands an objective proof for the existence of God and the Immortality of the soul. What can he mean by this? Or does objective certainty appear to him superior to subjective certainty? The axiom — ' / am myself — possesses only subjective certainty; and so far as we can conceive of the self-consciousness of God, even God is subjective so far as regards himself. And then, as to an objective existence of Immortality! (these are.^Enesidemus' own words), — should any being whatever, contemplating its existence in time, declare at any moment of that existence — ' Now, I am eter nal!' — then, on that very account, it could not be eternal."
We have seen that the attitude of the finite Ego towards the Non-Ego is practical; towards the Infinite Ego, speculative. In the first relation we find our selves surrounded by existences, over one part of which we exercise causality, and with the other (in whom we suppose an independent causality) we are in a state of reciprocal influence. In these relations the active and moral powers of man find their sphere. The moral law imparts to its objects — to all things whose exist ence is implied in its fulfilment — the same certainty which belongs to itself. The outward world assumes MORAL RELATIONS OF THE FINITE EGO. 83 a new reality, for we have imperative duties to perform which demand its existence. Life ceases to be an empty show without truth or significance; — it is our field of duty, the theatre on which our moral destiny is to he wrought out. The voice of conscience, of highest reason, bids us know, love, and honour be ings like ourselves, and those beings crowd around us. The ends of their and our existence demand the powers and appliances of physical life for their attainment; — that life, and the means of sustaining and using it, stand before us. The world is nothing more than the sphere and object of human activity; it exists because the purposes of our moral life require its existence. Of the law of duty we are immediately certain; the world becomes a reality to us by means of that pre vious certainty. Our life begins with an action, not a thought; we do not act because we know, but we know because we are called upon to act.
But not only does the law of human activity require our faith in its immediate objects and implements; it also points to a purpose, an aim, in our actions lying beyond themselves, to which they stand related as means to an end. Not that the moral law is depen dent on the perception of this end — the moral law is absolute and imperative in itself — but we necessarily connect with our actions some future result as a con sequence to which they inevitably tend, as the final accomplishment of the purpose which gave them birth. The moral sense cannot find such a fulfilment in the present life; — the forces of nature, the desires and passions of men, constantly oppose its dictates. It revolts against the permanence of things as they now are, and unceasingly strives to make them better. Nor can the individual look for such an accomplishment of the moral law of his nature in the progressive improve ment of his species. Were the highest grade of earthly perfection conceived and attained in the physical and moral world — (as it is conceivable and attainable) — Reason would still propose a higher grade beyond it. And even this measure of perfection could not be appropriated by humanity as its own, — as the result of its own exertions, — but must be considered as the creation of an unknown power, by whose unseen agency the basest passions of men, and even their vices and crimes, have been made the instruments of this consummation; while too often their good resolutions appear altogether lost to the world, or even to retard the purposes which they were apparently designed to promote. The chain of material causes and effects is not affected by the motives and feelings which prompt an action, but solely by the action itself; and the pur poses of mere physical existence would be as well, or even better promoted by an unerring mechanism as by the agency of free beings. Nevertheless, if moral obe dience be a reasonable service, it must have its result; if the Reason which commands it be not an utterly vain delusion, its law must be fulfilled. That law is the first principle of our nature, and it gives us the assurance, our faith in which no difficulty can shake, that no moral act can be fruitless, no work of Reason utterly lost. A chain of causes and effects, in which Freedom is superfluous and without aim, cannot thus be the limit of our existence; the law of our being cannot be fulfilled in the world of sense; — there must then be a super-sensual world in which it may be ac complished. In this purely spiritual world, will alone MORAL RELATIONS OF THE FINITE EGO. 85 is the first link of a chain of consequences which per vades the whole invisible realm of being; as action, in the sensual world, is the first link of a material chain which runs through the whole system of nature. Will is the active living principle of the super-sensual world; it may break forth in a material act, which belongs to the sensual world, and do there that which pertains to a material act to do; — but, independently of all phy sical manifestation, it flows forth in endless spiritual activity. Here human Freedom is untrammeled by earthly obstructions, and the moral law of our being may find that accomplishment which it sought in vain in the world of sense.
But although we are immediately conscious that our Will, our moral activity, must lead to consequences beyond itself, we yet cannot know what those conse quences may be, nor how they are possible. In re spect of the nature of these results, the present life is, in relation to the future, a life in faith. In the future life we shall possess these results, for we shall then make them the groundwork of new activity, and thus the future life will be, in relation to the present, a life in sight. But the spiritual world is even now with us, for we are already in possession of the principle from which it springs. Our Will, our free activity, is the only attribute which is solely and exclusively our own; and by it we are already citizens of the eternal world; the kingdom of heaven is here, or nowhere — it cannot become more immediately present at any point of finite existence. This life is the beginning of our being; the outward world is freely given to us as a firm ground on which we may commence our course; the future life is its continuation, for which we must i i ourselves create a starting-period in the present; and should the aim of this second life prove as unattainable to finite power as the end of the first is to us now, then the fresh strength, the firmer purpose, the clearer sight which shall be its immediate growth, will open to us another and a higher sphere of activity. But the world of duty is an infinite world; — every finite exer tion has but a definite aim; — and beyond the highest point toward which our labouring being strives, a higher still appears; and to such progression we can conceive no end. By free determination — in the effort after moral perfection, — we have laid hold on Eternal Life.
In the physical world we see certain phenomena following each other with undeviating regularity. We cannot see that what we name cause has in itself any power over that which we call effect, — that there is any relation between them except that of invariable sequence. But we suppose a law under which both sub sist, which regulates the mode of their existence, and by the efficiency of which the order of their succession is determined. So likewise, in the spiritual world, we entertain the firmest conviction that our moral Will is connected with certain consequences, though we cannot understand how mere Will can of itself produce such consequences. We here again conceive of a law under which our Will, and the Will of all finite beings, exists, in virtue of which it is followed by certain results, and out of which all our rela tions with other beings arise. So far as our Will is simply an internal act, complete in itself, it lies wholly within our own power; — 'so far as it is a fact in the super-sensual world — the first of a train of spiritual consequences, it is not dependent on ourselves, but on FAITH IN THE ABSOLUTE. 87