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PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



19. 



Fichte's 

 Absolute is 

 a process. 



on the theological conception of a transcendent mind, 

 and Fichte to take the word mind or self to mean a kind 

 of universal mind, in which all single minds are merged 

 or united. With this step his speculation, and German 

 speculation in general, left the region of actual psycho- 

 logical analysis. It became not only transcendental but 

 transcendent. 



The second important step which Fichte took was in- 

 volved in his attempt to conceive the nature of the truly 

 Eeal or the Absolute as activity, or, as he also calls it, as 

 a sequence of impulses towards action. In this concep- 

 tion is involved the admission that the truly Eeal is a 

 process, not a substance in the sense of Spinoza. And 

 Fichte is at considerable pains to differentiate his system 

 from that of Spinoza, inasmuch as it takes a genetic, in 

 opposition to a statical, view of the ultimate Eeality. 

 Further on his important philosophical writings deal 

 mainly with the practical questions involved in the state 

 and society, in history and the life of mankind. Here 

 he deals with the realisation of the Absolute, with the 

 unfolding of the truly Eeal in a world of many indi- 

 viduals. Beyond the very early introduction into his 

 reasoning of a something which he calls the Not-self, and 

 which others would call the external world or nature, he 

 does not approach the outstanding problem of Kant's 

 philosophy — the essence of things in themselves. In 

 fact these have, for him, no essential or true reality.^ 



' Fichte, as well as Schelling, in 

 his published Works exhibits the 

 strivings of the thinking mind to 

 arrive at a reasoned creed. The 

 Consummation, however, of this 

 searching process of thought is not 



to be found with either but only 

 in their successor Hegel. Whilst 

 Hegel kept the gradual develop- 

 ment of his final conception from 

 the world, Fichte's writings and 

 lectures laid open his repeated 



