OF THE UNITY OF THOUGHT. 635 



relation to the moral problem. And this, taken in a 

 religious and higher ethical meaning, was the main 

 interest and the main outcome of Kant's and Fichte's 

 teaching; of the latter even more so than of the 

 former, owing to the great part which Fichte played 

 in the higher intellectual and educational work of the 

 nation and the age. With him speculation had led 

 to a philosophy of action. The characteristics of his 

 nature were a strong will and character carrying 

 through its intellectual and practical schemes with 

 relentless logic and a rigorous moral instinct and 

 purpose. 



Fichte was unable from his strictly logical point of 

 view to admit of that break of continuity which is 

 demanded by the position on to which the mind of 

 Schelling was gradually moving : the admission that 

 you must look at things from two entirely different 

 points of view, both equally legitimate, the external 

 and the internal or introspective. His own rigorous 

 logic had led Fichte up to the point where the light 

 of consciousness emerges out of the night and dark- 

 ness of the unconscious. At this point you must 

 either be prepared to accept another and fundament- 

 ally opposed aspect or abandon as unintelligible the 

 great world of external nature of which the intro- 

 spective self after all forms only a part, in which it 

 is — in the form of human individuals or persons — 

 merely a special, though perhaps the highest and most 

 interesting, phenomenon. 



In choosing the former of these two possible courses, Reint"rodi 

 Schelling did no more than pay a tribute to the duTiism. 



