360 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



Having once arrived at this conviction of an under- 

 lying spiritual unity, the difficulty for Fichte was how 

 to descend from it into the diversities and contradictions 

 of the actual world which surrounds us, or philosophically 

 to explain how it comes that that which is essentially 

 and originally united should have unfolded itself in the 

 world of many things, many persons, and many contra- 

 dictions. This difficulty Fichte does not profess to solve : 

 he merely interprets it. The existence of materiality, of 

 the mechanical, of all that destroys the original unity 

 and harmony, is for him just as much an immediate and 

 inexplicable fact as is the conception of the spiritual 

 and deeper unity. But of the two facts the latter is 

 for us human beings the greater and more important, 

 brought home to us continually by the necessity to act, 

 to do something, and by the possibility of self-determin- 

 ation according to some ethical principle or moral law. 



The attempts of Fichte to elaborate the logical and 

 psychological details of his great conception must now 

 be regarded as unfortunate, and indeed at the time 

 they tended to bring discredit upon the whole of his 

 philosophy, exposing it to much criticism, and even to 

 ridicule.^ His greatness lay, not in the direction of 

 logical analysis, but rather in the personal fervour with 

 which he emphasised the principle of freedom and self- 

 determination according to high moral standards. He 

 did this in an age when the sense of liberty was making 

 itself felt everywhere among the rising generation. 

 With them it was frequently apt to run riot, and 



^ Fichte himself complains of this in the above quoted Introduction of 

 the year 1797. 



