Chapter IV.
THE GERMAN IDEALISTS
Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Herbart.
The Critical Philosophy won its first success in Germany less as a new epistemology than as what, in fact, its author meant it to be, a rehabilitation of religious belief. The limits of Reason had been drawn so closely only to make room for Faith. But the current of Rationalism was running too strongly to be so summarily stopped; and so with Kant's ablest successors faith is altogether abandoned, while the claims of reason are pushed relentlessly through. Among these more logical thinkers the first is J. G. Fichte (1762-1814). In him—for the third time in modern history, for the first and last time in Germany—the hero as philosopher finds a worthy representative. Born in Silesia, like Kant of humble parentage, and bred in circumstances of more oppressive poverty, he also received a severely religious and moral training as a preparation for the pastoral office. The bounty of an aristocratic patron gave him an excellent public-school education; but as a university student, first at Jena and then at Leipzig, he had to earn a scanty living by private tuition, finally abandoning his destined career to accept a post in a Swiss family at Zurich. There, as the result of an attachment in which the love was nearly all on the lady's side, he became engaged to a niece of the poet Klopstock, and after a long delay, caused by money
difficulties, was enabled to marry her. In the meantime he had become a convert to Kant's philosophy, winning the admiration of the old master himself by a Critique of all Revelation, written in four weeks. Published anonymously by an oversight, it was generally attributed to Kant himself, and, on the real authorship becoming known, won for Fichte an extraordinary Professorate of Philosophy at Jena, where his success as a lecturer and writer gave him for a time the leadership in German speculation (1794-1799). An untoward incident brought this stage of his career to an end. Writing in a philosophical review, he defined God as "the moral order of the universe." Dr. Temple long afterwards used much the same phrase when Bishop of Exeter, finding it, presumably, compatible with official Theism; but such was not the impression created in Saxony. A cry of atheism arose, much to the disgust of Fichte, whose position would have been better described as pantheistic. But what incensed him most was the suspicion of an attempt to interfere with the liberty of academic teaching. With his usual impetuosity he talked about resigning his chair—with a hint that others would follow his example—were the authorities at Weimar to permit such an outrage. Goethe, who was then Minister, observed that no Government could allow itself to be threatened, and Fichte was at once relieved of his post. Settling at Berlin, he became Professor of Philosophy in the new University founded after the French conquest of Prussia, having previously done much to revive the national spirit by his Addresses to the German Nation (1807-1808). These were in appearance the programme of a new educational Utopia; but their real purpose was so evident that the speaker lived in daily expectation of being summoned
before a French court-martial and shot. Unlike his countrymen, Goethe, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, Fichte passionately resented the Napoleonic despotism, throwing himself heart and soul into the great uprising by which it was finally overthrown. Although his wish to accompany the victorious army as field preacher could not be gratified, the campaign of 1813 still claimed him as one of its victims. After nursing his heroic wife to recovery from a hospital fever caught in attendance on the sick and wounded at Berlin, he took the infection from her and died early in 1814, soon after hearing that Blücher had crossed the Rhine.
G. H. Lewes, in a well-known story, has made himself and his readers merry over a German savant who undertakes to evolve the idea of a camel out of the depths of his moral consciousness. The phrase is commonly quoted as "inner consciousness," but this takes away its whole point. For the original satirist, who, I think, was not Lewes, but Heine, had in view the philosophy of Fichte. It need hardly be said that German savants are as careful observers and diligent collectors of facts as any others; and Fichte in particular trusted solely to experience for the knowledge of natural phenomena. But even as regards his general philosophy the place it gives to morality has been misconceived even by his closest students. With him goodwill really plays a less important part than with Kant, being not an end in itself, but a means towards an end. And what that end is his teaching makes quite clear.
Kant's first critics put their finger on the weak point of his system, the thing in itself. So, assuming it to be discarded, Fichte set to work on new lines, the lines of pure idealism. But, though an idealist, he is not, any more than Berkeley, a solipsist. The celebrated