OF SOCIETY. 



547 



out his whole career as an academic and popular teacher si. 



Fichte's 



an equal love for the most abstract reasoning and for the ."closed 



industrial 



practical application of his ideas. The two subjects state -" 

 which evidently interested him most were the highest 

 form of a science which should furnish the foundation 

 and principles of all other scientific reasonings, a kind of 

 first philosophy or organon of thought ; and in the second 

 place the foundation of practical philosophy which to 

 him presents two distinct but equally important aspects, 

 that of the Eight and that of the Good. To both prob- 

 lems, the abstract one and the practical one, he con- 

 tinually recurs. Not only among German thinkers, but 

 perhaps even among European thinkers, he is the first 

 to grasp the practical problem in its full social mean- 

 ing and gravity, and in the various aspects which it has 

 since presented, the theoretical, the historical, and the 

 actual. Also, what is still more remarkable consider- 

 ing the surroundings in which he lived, he recognised 

 the importance of industrialism in the modern state. 

 Among the long line of writings, of popular addresses 

 and academic lectures, which he devotes to the social 

 problem, there stands in the middle a short tract entitled 

 'The Closed Industrial State' [1800]. Of this title he 

 gives a short preliminary explanation as follows : l " The 

 juridical state is formed by a closed number of persons 

 who live under the same laws and the same highest 

 controlling power. This number of persons is now [i.e. 

 in this tract] to be limited to mutual commerce and 



1 The tract was published to- 

 wards the end of the year 1800 as 

 an appendix to the ' Rechtslehre,' 

 and is reprinted in the ' Collected 



Works,' vol. iii. pp. 387-513. The 

 extract given iu the text is printed 

 on the reverse side of the title- 

 page. 



