antithesis of the ego and the non-ego dates from him, and strikes the keynote of his whole system. It might be thought that, as compared with the old realism, this was a distinction without a difference. But that is not so; for, according to Fichte, the non-ego is subjective in its origin, and that is where he departs widely from Berkeley's theological idealism. Not that I create the not-myself; I assume it as the condition of my self-consciousness—a remarkable feat of logic, but after all not more wonderful than that space and time should result from the activity of the outer and inner senses. This figment of my imagination is anyhow solid enough to beget a new feeling of resistance and recoil, throwing the self back on itself, and bringing with it the interpretation of that external impact by the category of causation, of its own activity as substance, and of the whole deal between the ego and the non-ego as interaction or reciprocity. In this way the first triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis is obtained; and from this, by a vast expenditure of ingenuity, the whole array of Kant's forms, categories, and faculties is evolved as a coherent system of scientific thought in obedience to a single principle—the self-realisation of the ego, alternatively admitting and transcending a limit to its activity.
It will be easily understood that this self-realising ego is neither Fichte's nor anyone else's self, but a universal principle, fundamentally the same in all. One is reminded of Descartes's self-thinking thought by which the reality of the universe was guaranteed; but between the two there is this vast difference, that the Frenchman's ego resembles a box containing a variety of independent ideas, to be separately handled and examined; the German's is a box enclosing a coiled-up spring by
the expansion of which all the wheels of the philosophical machine are made go round. From the action of the not-self on the self results the whole of nature as we conceive it; from the reaction of the self on the not-self, the whole mentality and morality of man—morality being understood to include the domestic, social, political, educational, and industrial organisation of life. The final cause, the impelling ideal of existence, is the self-realisation of the ego, the entire absorption into its personal energy of the non-ego, of nature, to be effected by perfect knowledge of how the physical universe is constituted issuing in perfect subjugation of its forces to the human will. But such a realisation of the Absolute Ego would mean its annihilation, for, as we have seen, the antithesis between objective and subjective is the very condition of consciousness that without which it could neither begin nor continue to exist. Therefore the process must go on for ever, and this necessity guarantees the eternal duration of the human race—not, as Kant had dreamed, of the individual soul, since for Fichte the Categorical Imperative demands a consummation widely different from that combination of virtue with happiness which had satisfied his master. And the agency by which it is being effected through infinite time is not a personal God, but that moral order of the world which Fichte regarded as the only true object of religious feeling. As for human immortality, he seems to have first accepted, but afterwards rejected it in favour of a mystical union with the divine.
It has been said that morality was not with Fichte what it had been with Kant—the highest good. Nevertheless, as a means towards the final synthesis, morality interested him intensely, and his best work has been
done in ethics. As a condition of self-realisation the primal ego becomes personified in a multitude of free individualities. Just as in Stoicism, each individual is conceived as having a special office to perform in the world-process, and the State exists—ideally speaking—in order to guarantee the necessary independence of all its citizens. For this purpose everyone must have the right to work and the right to a living wage. Thus Fichte appears as the first theorist of State Socialism in the history of German thought. Probably the example of the Greek Stoics with their communistic utopias acting on a kindred spirit, rather than any prophetic vision of the coming century, is to be credited for this remarkable anticipation.
Schelling.
German philosophy is prolific of self-contradictions; and so far the most flagrant example has been offered by Fichte's Theory of Knowledge, starting as it does with the idea of an impersonal ego, developing through a process in which this selfless self demands its own negation at every step, and determined by the prospect of a catastrophe that would be the annihilation of consciousness itself. In fact, there seemed no need to wait until time had run out; the self, or, as it was now called, the subject, had absorbed all reality, only to find that the material universe, reconstituted as the object of knowledge, was an indispensable condition of its existence. And meanwhile the physical sciences, more particularly those concerned with inorganic nature, were entering on a series of triumphs unparalleled since the days of Newton. Philosophy must come to terms with these or cease to exist.
The task of reconciliation was first attempted by
F. W. J. Schelling (1775-1854), a Suabian, and the first South German who made a name in pure philosophy. Educated at the University of Tübingen, at an early age he covered an encyclopædic range of studies and began authorship at nineteen, gaining a professorship at Jena four years later. Wandering about from one university to another, and putting forward new opinions as often as he changed his residence, the young adventurer ceased to publish after 1813, and remained silent till in 1841 he came forward at Berlin as the champion of a reactionary current, practically renouncing the naturalistic pantheism by which his early reputation had been made. But he utterly failed in the attempt, which was finally abandoned in the fifth year from its inception. Lewes, who saw Schelling in his old age, describes him as remarkably like Socrates; his admirers called him a modern Plato; but he had nothing of the deep moral earnestness that characterised either, nor indeed was morality needed for the work that he actually did. This, to use the phrase of his fellow-student Hegel, consisted in raising philosophy to its absolute standpoint, in passing from the subjective moralism of the eighteenth century to the all-comprehensive systematisation of the nineteenth.
Schelling began as a disciple of Fichte, but he came simultaneously under the influence of Spinoza, whose fame had been incessantly spreading through the last generation in Germany, with some reinforcement from the revived name of Bruno. Their teaching served to make the latent pantheism of Fichte more explicit, while the great contemporary discoveries gave a new interest to the study of nature, which Fichte, unlike Kant, had put in the background, strictly subordinating it to the moral service of man. Had he cared to evolve