What Fichte means by freedom may be best explained by its opposition to instinct. A man acting instinctively may be acting quite reasonably, in a way which any one fully conscious of all the implications and consequences of the action would judge to be reasonable. But in order that his actions should be free he must himself be fully conscious of all those implications and consequences.
It follows that the end of mankind upon earth is to reach a state in which all the relations of life shall be ordered according to reason, not instinctively but with full consciousness and deliberate purpose. This end should govern the ethical rules of conduct, and it determines the necessary stages of history.
It gives us at once two main periods, the earliest and the latest: the earliest, in which men act reasonably by instinct, and the latest, in which they are conscious of reason and try to realise it fully. But before reaching this final stage they must pass through an epoch in which reason is conscious of itself, but not regnant. And to reach this they must have emancipated themselves from instinct, and this process of emancipation means a fourth epoch. But they could not have wanted to emancipate themselves unless they had felt instinct as a servitude imposed by an external authority, and therefore we have to distinguish yet another epoch wherein reason is expressed in authoritarian institutions to which men blindly submit. In this way Fichte deduces five historical epochs: two in which progress is blind, two in which it is free, and an intermediate in which it is struggling to consciousness. [Footnote: First Epoch: that of instinctive reason; the age of innocence. Second: that of authoritarian reason. Third: that of enfranchisement; the age of scepticism and unregulated liberty. Fourth: that of conscious reason, as science. Fifth: that of regnant reason, as art.] But there are no locked gates between these periods; they overlap and mingle; each may have some of the characteristics of another; and in each there is a vanguard leading the way and a rearguard lagging behind.
At present (1804) we are in the third age; we have broken with authority, but do not yet possess a clear and disciplined knowledge of reason. [Footnote: Three years later, however, Fichte maintained in his patriotic Discourses to the German Nation (1807) that in 1804 man had crossed the threshold of the fourth epoch. He asserted that the progress of "culture" and science will depend henceforward chiefly on Germany.] Fichte has deduced this scheme purely a priori without any reference to actual experience. "The philosopher," he says, "follows the a priori thread of the world-plan which is clear to him without any history; and if he makes use of history, it is not to prove anything, since his theses are already proved independently of all history."
Historical development is thus presented as a necessary progress towards a goal which is known but cannot be reached. And this fact as to the destiny of the race constitutes the basis of morality, of which the fundamental law is to act in such a way as to promote the free realisation of reason upon earth. It has been claimed by a recent critic that Fichte was the first modern philosopher to humanise morals. He completely rejected the individualistic conception which underlay Kantian as well as Christian ethics. He asserted that the true motive of morality is not the salvation of the individual man but the Progress of humanity. In fact, with Fichte Progress is the principle of ethics. That the Christian ideal of ascetic saintliness detached from society has no moral value is a plain corollary from the idea of earthly Progress. [Footnote: X. Leon, La Philosophie de Fichte (1902), pp. 477-9.]
One other point in Fichte's survey of history deserves notice—the social role of the savant. It is the function of the savant to discover the truths which are a condition of moral progress; he may be said to incarnate reason in the world. We shall see how this idea played a prominent part in the social schemes of Saint-Simon and Comte. [Footnote: Fichte, Ueber die Bestimmung des Gelehrten (1794).]
5.
Hegel's philosophy of history is better known than Fichte's. Like Fichte, he deduced the phases a priori from his metaphysical principles, but he condescended to review in some detail the actual phenomena. He conceived the final cause of the world as Spirit's consciousness of its own freedom. The ambiguous term "freedom" is virtually equivalent to self-consciousness, and Hegel defines Universal History as the description of the process by which Spirit or God comes to the consciousness of its own meaning. This freedom does not mean that Spirit could choose at any moment to develop in a different way; its actual development is necessary and is the embodiment of reason. Freedom consists in fully recognising the fact.
Of the particular features which distinguish Hegel's treatment, the first is that he identifies "history" with political history, the development of the state. Art, religion, philosophy, the creations of social man, belong to a different and higher stage of Spirit's self-revelation. [Footnote: The three phases of Spirit are (1) subjective; (2) objective; (3) absolute. Psychology, e.g., is included in (1), law and history in (2), religion in (3).] In the second place, Hegel ignores the primitive prehistoric ages of man, and sets the beginning of his development in the fully-grown civilisation of China. He conceives the Spirit as continually moving from one nation to another in order to realise the successive stages of its self-consciousness: from China to India, from India to the kingdoms of Western Asia; then from the Orient to Greece, then to Rome, and finally to the Germanic world. In the East men knew only that ONE is free, the political characteristic was despotism; in Greece and Rome they knew that SOME are free, and the political forms were aristocracy and democracy; in the modern world they know that ALL are free, and the political form is monarchy. The first period, he compared to childhood, the second to youth (Greece) and manhood (Rome), the third to old age, old but not feeble. The third, which includes the medieval and modern history of Europe, designated by Hegel as the Germanic world—for "the German spirit is the spirit of the modern world"—is also the final period. In it God realises his freedom completely in history, just as in Hegel's own absolute philosophy, which is final, God has completely understood his own nature.
And here is the most striking difference between the theories of Fichte and Hegel. Both saw the goal of human development in the realisation of "freedom," but, while with Fichte the development never ends as the goal is unattainable, with Hegel the development is already complete, the goal is not only attainable but has now been attained. Thus Hegel's is what we may call a closed system. History has been progressive, but no path is left open for further advance. Hegel views this conclusion of development with perfect complacency. To most minds that are not intoxicated with the Absolute it will seem that, if the present is the final state to which the evolution of Spirit has conducted, the result is singularly inadequate to the gigantic process. But his system is eminently inhuman. The happiness or misery of individuals is a matter of supreme indifference to the Absolute, which, in order to realise itself in time, ruthlessly sacrifices sentient beings.