OF THE UNITY OF THOUGHT. 629 



schools and the text-books. Fichte distinctly explains 

 that in speaking of the Self, which he unfortunately 

 calls " ego," he neither deals with psychological and 

 logical data nor with the individual. He refers only to 

 that which has to take place in every thinking mind as 

 the condition of thought and knowledge. 



Now it is quite evident that such a position is 

 difficult to realise and still more difficult to maintain, 

 and that it suggests two departures : the first lies in 

 the direction of conceiving of this " ego " or self as 

 the deeper-lying ground of the individual self which 

 appears actually in many examples, as the one universal 

 spirit of which the individual spirits are merely different 

 manifestations. And the fact that Fichte himself, in 

 many instances, introduces the word "God" when 

 speaking of the centre and root of self-consciousness, 

 gave to subsequent thought that direction which has 

 been termed Pantheistic, and brought it near to the 

 view developed in Spinoza's system. 



The other departure from the untenable position of 

 the Fichtean " ego " or self lies in the direction of the 

 conception of a number or society of many different 

 selves or human beings. 



These two departures suggested by the abstract 

 formulary of Fichte's philosophy have their final ex- 

 pression, on the one side in the system of Hegel, on 

 the other side in a reversion to the monadism of 

 Leibniz. And the latter is again differentiated on 

 the one hand into the atomistic conception on which all 

 purely scientific or mechanical explanations are founded, 

 and on the other hand into the essentially Leibnizian 



