162 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



phenomena of empirical consciousness can be brought 

 within the conceptions of our intellect. The door is 

 again opened for constructive, as opposed to purely 

 descriptive, thought, for metaphysics as opposed to mere 

 psychology. If we join to this peculiar and novel 

 attitude, to the critical or transcendental point of view 

 introduced by Kant, the dualism inherent in his system 

 which jarred upon his disciples and followers, we arrive 

 at the root, at the elemental forces, which prompted 

 Fichte's speculation, and carried it on through the whole 

 idealistic school, notably through Schelling, Hegel, and 

 Schleiermacher. 



Fichte saw clearly and demonstrated with great force, 

 that the empirical or individual self as revealed by 

 introspection, always implies a Not-self, that it lives 

 in an environment of other similar selves. In order to 

 arrive at a unifying principle or aspect, we are bound to 

 conceive, though we can ncAer demonstrate, a condition 

 anterior to and beneath the differentiation of Self and Not- 

 self, of subject and object, and also what we may term a 

 universal self in which the different individual selves are, 

 as it were, united. He thus boldly grappled with the 

 two great problems with which the nineteenth century 

 has been occupied ever since. Popularly expressed, 

 they are the problem of the soul in relation to the body, 

 of mind in relation to nature — die Seelcnfrage — on the 

 one side, and the problem of humanity or society, the 

 relation of the individual to the social mind — die 

 sociale Frage — on the other. Unfortunately his earlier 

 writings do not express his conception of the philo- 

 sophical problem, which to him was not split up into 



