446 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



divined, for it presents itself to the human mind in the 

 immediacy of feeling and not by discursive thought. 



Fichte emphasises in this way an important truth 

 which, again and again, rises up in the history of 

 thought, be this philosophical, poetical, or religious : If 

 the human mind is at all capable of understanding, inter- 

 preting, or ideally reconstructing the world which sur- 

 rounds it and of which it forms a part — i.e., if it is at all 

 capable of approaching the essence of reality — some point 

 must exist where it is at one with the Absolute, the 

 truly Eeal ; and only when this point is reached — i.e., sub 

 specie unitatis et ceternitatis — will it arrive at, and support, 

 the conviction of the universal Order and meaning of 

 things. From this point of view, so difficult to reach 

 and so easily lost again, we should then be able to grasp 



Therefore, as Kuno Fischer has 

 remarked : " In the first use of 

 the term Fichte agreed with Kant 

 in maintaining an intellectual intui- 

 tion as equivalent to the immedi- 

 ate self-consciousness of the sub- 

 ject. The principle of Wissen- 

 schaftslehre is the intellect in 

 its self - observation. This self- 

 observation of the intellect or 

 the original act through which 

 consciousness becomes its own ob- 

 ject is called by Fichte Intellectuelle 

 Anschauung ; it is the original act 

 of self-consciousness or of the Ego. 

 Whoever ascribes to himself an ac- 

 tivity appeals to this Anschauung ; 

 in it is the source of life, and 

 without it there is death" (Kuno 

 Fischer, ' Geschichte der neueren 

 Philosophic,' " Fichte," 1st ed., p. 

 476, with quotations from Fichte's 

 ' Second Introduction,' Works, 

 vol. i. pp. 451 sqq.) Subse- 

 quently, through a remark which 

 Kant made in his ' Third Critique,' 



the term acquired a more preg- 

 nant meaning. " Kant demon- 

 strates from the conditions of 

 human reasoning the impossibility 

 of an intellectual sight, or of an in- 

 tuitive intellect ; the impossibility 

 of a faculty for which the Thing 

 in itself would be an object ; the 

 incognoscibility of Things in them- 

 selves and the impossibility of an 

 intellectual sight are for Kant one 

 and the same thing. In this sense 

 Kant denies intellectual sight ; in 

 this sense Fichte denies it like- 

 wise " (Kuno Fischer, loc. cit, 

 p. 478). But it is just this sug- 

 gestion made but not accepted 

 by Kant in his ' Third Critique ' 

 which had a special attraction for 

 Schelling, to whom it seems as if 

 Lotze's remark applies more im- 

 mediately than to Fichte, though 

 the latter subsequently, not unlike 

 Jacobi, seems to admit a similar 

 conception under the designation 

 of religious faith. 



