OF REALITY. 



451 



It was natural that the position taken up by Fichte 

 should provoke much criticism and opposition, that his one- 

 sided accentuation of the subjective side of reality should 

 appear unsatisfactory. At that time a twofold interest 

 was spreading in the study of natural phenomena, 

 especially of the phenomena and forms of living or 

 animated nature ; it was also the age that witnessed the 

 discovery of galvanic phenomena, which for a time seemed 



more or less successful attempts to 

 arrive at, and give expression to, 

 a reasoned body of thought or a 

 creed. With Schelling the pro- 

 cess becomes still more tentative 

 and changing, and this was the 

 more the case as he lived long 

 enough to realise the insufficiency 

 of the whole idealistic movement of 

 thought. From the beginning to 

 the end of his career Fichte had a 

 definite purpose before him. He 

 was, more than any of the other 

 leading thinkers of the century, a 

 man who had a conscious message 

 to deliver to his age and nation. 

 He was influenced by other thinkers, 

 but they did not divert his think- 

 ing and teaching into new courses ; 

 they furnished only new aspects 

 and new ways, with the help of 

 which he could find a more and 

 more adequate expression of his 

 guiding idea and fulfil his mission. 

 This view of Fichte's speculative 

 labours is now, thanks to the pains- 

 taking researches and the lucid 

 expositions of historians like Kuno 

 Fischer, Falckenberg, and Windel- 

 band. generally established. Earlier 

 writers of the history of modern 

 philosophy, following misrepresent- 

 ations and misunderstandings of 

 Fichte's main object, which can be 

 largely traced to the influence of 

 Schelling, were wont to speak of an 

 earlier and a later system of 

 Fichte's philosophy. This view is 

 now replaced by the conviction of 



the consistency of Fichte's main 

 argument. For our purposes it is 

 of special interest to note how, with 

 Fichte, the interest in one and the 

 same fundamental idea the supre- 

 macy of moral law and order 

 moved away from the significance 

 which this idea had for the prob- 

 lem of knowledge to that which it 

 had for the problem of reality. 

 The initial theory of knowledge 

 (Wissenschaftslehre) in the light 

 of the same central conception 

 gradually developed into a theory 

 of being (Ontology), an answer to 

 the question ; What is the truly 

 Real ? Of all the earlier philo- 

 sophies the only one, in modern 

 times, which has answered this 

 question definitely was that of 

 Spinoza ; all other thinkers, such 

 as Descartes, Leibniz, and even 

 Kant, not to speak of the realistic 

 school in this country, found the 

 Real in something which was given 

 or known already in some other 

 way. This is owing to the essenti- 

 ally receptive attitude which all 

 these thinkers took up to the exist- 

 ing regions of knowledge occupied 

 by common-sense, science, or reli- 

 gious doctrine. The question : 

 What is the truly Real ? in perfect 

 simplicity, directness, and independ- 

 ence presented itself in modern 

 times first in Spinoza, and after he 

 had been neglected and almost for- 

 gotten, in Fichte. 



