442 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



stating the eternal truths and formulating the everlasting 

 problems of knowing and being, succeeded in imparting 

 to these subjects a fresh interest, inspiring his age with 

 the courage to attack them once more and with the 

 belief in their ultimate solubility. 



In the last chapter, when dealing with the problem of 

 Knowledge and Kant's epoch-making contributions to 

 its solution, I pointed out how in his various suggestions 

 may be found indications of the several further develop- 

 ments which the problem underwent in the course of 

 the nineteenth century. Dealing now with Eeality, we 

 can similarly point to Kant's writings as containing or 

 suggesting the different aspects which the problem as- 

 sumed with his successors, and we can accordingly 

 classify their contributions according to these different 

 aspects contained implicitly in Kant's teaching. Fichte, 

 14 . the greatest among Kant's immediate followers, has 

 Kant's tenns pointed to the threefold meaning which the word reality 



for Reality. TIT t -,-, 



had for Kant : see a remarkable passage in his lectures 

 on " Wissenschaftslehre " from the year 1804. In this 

 passage he uses the expression, the Absolute, a term 

 frequently employed in earlier philosophies, and which 

 in the present connection may be considered synonymous 

 with what I have termed the central Reality or the truly 

 Eeal. Fichte finds that Kant made three important at- 

 tempts to determine the Absolute, corresponding to the 

 three critiques. " In the Critique of Pure Eeason sensuous 

 experience was for him the absolute, ... in a consistent 

 exposition of the principles which he there adopted the 

 supersensuous world would have to disappear altogether, 



1 Nachlass II., p. 103. 



