170 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



The philosophy of the day thus aimed at basing ethics 

 upon a religious foundation. But this religious founda- 

 tion was not to be a mere blind and thoughtless repetition 

 of the ruling theological dogmas, it was to be the spirit 

 and not the letter of Christian faith, and this spirit was 

 to be reached, the deeper understanding was to be 

 attained, through a moral interpretation. If we desire 

 to define the position of ethical thought of that age and 

 school in terms which have become current in this 

 country, we may say that Kant's and Fichte's ethics 

 were intuitional. As such they were quite as far 

 removed from the utilitarian ethics of the present day 

 as they were from the dry formalism which prevailed in 

 the theological schools, rationalistic and orthodox alike. 

 But it was from the latter that the opposition first 

 made itself felt. 



The customary teachings of the Church were closely 

 bound up with existing governments and state rule. The 

 Church, with its catechism, was then, as it has been 

 many times before and since, a powerful ally of 

 bureaucracy and political intolerance. Fichte had 

 shown that he stood on the side of social and political 

 freedom. Though he held up the moral law as the 

 highest revelation, as a sacred command, he held and 

 preached enlightened views on social, legal, and political 

 questions. The great success of his academic teaching, 

 his personal influence on younger minds, had aroused 

 many jealousies. Being moreover an assertive nature, 

 he had made many enemies. In the more advanced 

 universities of Germany 'Zern- und Lehr-Freiheit ' was 

 then the order of the day; nowhere more so than at 



