OF KNOWLEDGE. 



295 



century. This assertion might justify itself by pointing 

 to a number of new terms introduced into philosophical 

 language referring to the subject in question. From 

 this point of view Kant's critical labours have been 

 appraised and represented as the starting-point for the 

 later contributions of Continental thinkers ; whereas in 

 this country the earlier studies dealing with this subject 

 are more directly connected with the writings of Bacon, 

 Locke, and Hume, to which Kant himself was likewise 

 largely indebted. 



During the last years of the eighteenth century 

 Fichte had introduced the problem of knowledge under 

 the new term and conception of Wissenschaftslehre^ 

 professing that such was no more than a general theory 

 of methodical knowledge (termed in German Wissen- 



s. 



Fichte's 

 Wissen- 

 schaftslehre. 



1 The term Wissenschaftslehre 

 appears for the first time in 1794, 

 in Fichte's correspondence with 

 Reinhold, and had probably been 

 fixed upon during a course of Lec- 

 tures which he delivered at Zurich 

 before a small circle of friends 

 interested in his philosophy. These 

 included Lavater, the physiog- 

 nomist. Shortly after that time 

 Fichte was installed at Weimar in 

 the chair vacated by Reinhold, 

 and there he published his first 

 tract "On the Conception of Wissen- 

 schaftslehre or the so-called Philo- 

 sophy " as a syllabus for the 

 attenders of his Lectures. It was 

 republished four years later with a 

 new explanatory preface. In this 

 tract he defines his aim as being to 

 give to philosophy, as a science, 

 unity and certainty, or necessary 

 connection. This undertaking, the 

 success of which he hypothetically 

 supposes, and which he intends to 

 establish, should warrant a new 

 name in order to distinguish it 



from existing sciences and from 

 existing philosophy as a preliminary 

 investigation. Should such a funda- 

 mental science be possible, it would 

 deserve, he says, to "drop the 

 name which it hitherto bore in 

 consequence of a by no means ex- 

 aggerated modesty. . . . The nation 

 which should invent such a science 

 would indeed deserve to give it a 

 name in its own tongue, and it 

 might well be called die Wissen- 

 schaft (i.e., science par excellence) 

 or Wissenschaftslehre " (Fichte, 

 ' Werke,' vol. i. p. 44). In a note 

 he also indicates that through such 

 an achievement the nation and its 

 language would attain to a distinct 

 preponderance over other languages. 

 In passing it may be noticed that 

 not the term chosen by Fichte but 

 the later one of rkenntnisstheorie 

 has in a manner attained to the lead- 

 ing position he indicates, though 

 both terms share the disadvantage 

 of not being easily and intelligibly 

 translatable into other languages. 



