614 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCK. 
kind of central energy in the human mind, capable, like 
the energy of the physical universe, of assuming various 
shapes and undergoing various transformations. They 
baffle and elude the theological mechanic who would carve 
them to dogmatic forms. They offer themselves freely to 
the poet who understands his vocation, and whose function 
is, or ought to be, to find "local habitation " for thoughts 
woven into our subjective life, but which refuse to be 
mechanically defined. 
We now stand face to face with the final problem. It 
is this: Are the brain, and the moral and intellectual proc- 
esses known to be associated with the brain and, as far 
as our experience goes, indissolubly associated subject to 
the laws which we find paramount in physical nature? Is 
the will of man, in others words, free, or are it and nature 
equally " bound fast in fate?" From this latter conclusion, 
after he had established it to the entire satisfaction of his 
understanding, the great German thinker Fichte recoiled. 
You will find the record of this struggle between head and 
heart in his book, entitled " Die Bestimrnung des Men- 
schen" The Vocation of Man.* Fichte was determined 
at all hazards to maintain his freedom, but the price he 
paid for it indicates the difficulty of the task. To escape 
from the iron necessity seen everywhere reigning in phys- 
ical nature, he turned defiantly round upon nature and 
law, and affirmed both of them to be the products of his 
own mind. He was not going to be the slave of a thing 
which he had himself created. There is a good deal to be 
said in favor of this view, but few of us probably would be 
able to bring into play the solvent transcendentalism 
whereby Fichte melted his chains. 
Why do some regard this notion of necessity with terror, 
while others do not fear it at all? Has not Carlyle some- 
where said that a belief in destiny is the bias of all earnest 
minds? " It is not Nature," says Fichte, " it is Freedom 
itself, by which the greatest and most terrible disorders 
incident to our race are produced. Man is the cruelest 
enemy of man.' 5 But the question of moral responsibility 
here emerges, and it is the possible loosening of this 
responsibility that so many of us dread. The notion of 
* Translated by Dr. William Smith of Edinburgh; Trtibner, 1873. 
