164 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



guiding idea in most of the philosophical and historical 

 sciences ever since. 



This obscurity Fichte removed to a great extent in his 

 later writings where he adopted a phraseology which was 

 more in harmony with common -sense. But already in 

 his earlier deliverances his great enthusiasm, exhibited in 

 a powerful personality and a fervid oratory, compelled the 

 assent and admiration even of those of his disciples to 

 whom his written word and doctrine must have presented 

 insuperable difficulties. The governing thought which 

 runs through all his elaborate expositions is that the 

 character of the underlying source and principle of 

 everything, of the Self before it is differentiated into 

 Self and Not-self and into many individual selves, is 

 Activity. It is in fact the autonomous Will which is 

 the unifying principle before and beneath everything 

 else. 



Although, therefore, the whole of Fichte's earlier 

 writings appear primd facie as very little occupied with 

 specific questions of moral philosophy such as had been 

 elaborately discussed from all possible points of view by 

 thinkers in this country, nevertheless the root and 

 inspiration of all his thought is an ethical idea, the 

 Kantian conception of an autonomous, i.e., self -restraining 

 Will or active power. And the whole tenor and object 

 of his philosophy is to impress his age with a supreme 

 reverence for duty and a confident self-reliance. To 

 inculcate this he laboured unremittingly all his life, 

 expounding his views in ever new and more intelligible 

 expression and illustration. His was just the personality 

 to teach what was then most wanted to raise thoughtful 



