626 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



with his view the attributes of personality. These he 

 conceived as being indissolubly connected with the 

 limitations of human persons. Throughout the whole 

 of his philosophy he never adopted that term as ex- 

 pressive of his deepest and highest religious conviction, 

 however much he may have gradually found a philo- 

 sophical expression for the moral Truths of the Christian 

 religion. 



If we now inquire how Fichte, in addition to the 

 religious problem which directed all his thought, dealt 

 with the more technical philosophical problem, the 

 unification of thought or knowledge, we find that he 

 takes up Kant's position. But instead of asking, how 

 is experience possible ? he puts the deeper question, 

 how is consciousness or self - consciousness possible ? 

 And while Kant's first answer to his question was, " by 

 the unity of apperception," Fichte put the question more 

 pertinently, how is this unity of apperception or of 

 consciousness possible, i.e., thinkable and intelligible ? 

 And the answer which he gave to this question was : 

 " through an original act or activity." He thus at once 

 seized upon the link between the unity of the theoretical 

 and that of the practical reason, which in Kant's system 

 was indeed suggested but not clearly and consistently 

 established. At the same time he threw overboard, 

 as unnecessary and misleading, the idea of an additional 

 external unity of the " Thing in itself," which had 

 remained as a limiting idea in Kant's system.^ 



1 The fuudameutal practical idea 

 first clearly stated by Fichte, that 

 a moral purpose must form the 

 explanation of every satisfactory 



analysis of the stages and develop- 

 ment, not only of practical, but 

 also of theoretical reason, has sur- 

 vived and come forward aj^ain and 



