Fichte's Science of Knowledge/Chapter I

CHAPTER I.
THE MAN.

EFORE entering upon the study of the philosophy of Fichte, it will be well to glance for a moment at his character and life. I shall not attempt a biography, however brief, but shall merely call attention to certain facts that may in some degree serve our immediate purpose.

The philosophy of Fichte is more personal than most systems. It is the expression of the life and nature of its author. At first this personal element might seem to detract from the value of the system considered in larger relations. It is obvious, however, that this will depend on the character of the personality which the system manifests. So far as the spirit of Fichte fulfils the ideal of human nature, so far will the personal element in his philosophy give to it a greater worth, if not a wider acceptance. So far as his character is imperfect, so far will the personal element detract from the value of the system. In both these respects we find his philosophy affected by the characteristic which we are considering.

Superficially considered, Fichte was a man of imperious temperament, and somewhat mechanical in his methods. These two qualities gave him great power as an educator, while at the same time they occasionally introduced what may be called the schoolmaster element into his procedure, and while his imperiousness sometimes complicated relationships that less self-assertion would have made simple. These characteristics, it must be repeated, are largely superficial and accidental to his nature. Deeper than this we find what has been too much overlooked, a real spirit of reverence and of docility. If Fichte so often claimed a mastery, it was because he felt his own strength and the weakness of those about him. When in the presence of one whom he could really reverence, he was as simple and reverent as a child.

Beneath these more external traits was his true nature. This was made up of an energy that could hardly be surpassed, of a power of love that was his inspiration, and of a passion for truth and for righteousness that pressed toward absolute satisfaction.

In all these respects, his system was the image of himself. Harsh, hard, and sometimes mechanical without, it had a heart of fire within. What seemed, looked at from the outside, to be the mere subtleties of logical analysis, were really the stages by which he was seeking to bring into the consciousness of his followers, the absoluteness of the moral law.

There is another reason why a notice of the life of Fichte is an important preparation for the study of his philosophy. The interruptions that broke up his life disturbed also the orderly development of his system. The fragmentary manner in which he was thus forced to give his system to the world has been one great source of the misunderstandings in regard to it.

Fichte’s childhood was in many respects the anticipation of his manhood. The occupation of pasturing geese, to which his childhood was devoted, must have been well suited to the reveries of which he was thus early fond. He would stand, we are told, for hours, looking into vacancy, to the neglect, one would think, of his feathered charge; but in later life he looked back to these hours of contemplation with grateful pleasure.

He early showed the instinct and the passion of the orator. The only manifestations of oratorical power that offered themselves to his life were the sermons of the parish church. These so entered into his heart that he could reproduce them with a force, one is tempted to think, sometimes greater than they originally possessed. A nobleman in the neighborhood, regretting that he was one Sunday too late for the sermon, was told of the goose-boy who could repeat it for him in such a way as would wholly make up his loss. The little fellow, being summoned, went into it with a will, and if he had not been interrupted would have reproduced the whole discourse. This was the beginning of his fortune; for the gentleman was so pleased that he undertook the burden of his education. He died, indeed, not very much later, but the start had been made.

We find in his childhood the same ethical passion and the same pedagogical instinct that he always showed, whether in regard to himself or to others. He found that a story-book which his father had given him, the history of the “Horned Siegfried,” was absorbing too much of his time; he therefore heroically threw it into a stream, and with an almost broken heart saw it borne away. Later, when he was a young man, we find him treating himself with the same discipline, denying himself little pleasures merely for the sake of the denial.

One incident of his school life should be mentioned, it was so characteristic, and illustrates so well his later conduct. At the school there was a system of fagging. Fichte was placed under an older scholar, who played the tyrant. He determined to make a strike for independence. He satisfied his sense of justice by announcing to his tormenter what he should do if such treatment were continued. As this produced no effect, he started forth, fired by a sense of his wrongs, and also by romantic hopes suggested by the story of Robinson Crusoe, which he had been reading. He seems to have felt the attraction, which is so natural to boys, for the sea; while the experience of a desert island appeared very tempting to him. As he was pursuing his way, it occurred to him, however, that he had been instructed to enter upon no important undertaking without prayer. He knelt on a hillock by the wayside, and as he arose from his knees the thought of his parents came to him, and of their grief at his departure. His inmost nature of love was awakened. He turned back and told his story; and it is pleasant to be able to add that he was relieved from the oppression which had driven him away.

During his whole youth, he was crippled for lack of means. He looked forward to the profession of theology, but he was obliged to break off his studies on account of poverty. The consistory of Saxony refused his petition for the aid often given to theological students. He was thus thrown wholly upon himself.

Much in the youth of Fichte reminds us of that of Carlyle. Like Carlyle, he had an intense desire to influence men, with not a very distinct view of the end toward which he would lead them. Like Carlyle, he was forced by poverty to accept the position of tutor in one family and another, and, like him, he was irked by the relations into which he was brought with uncongenial persons. In one place, his pedagogical spirit is shown by the fact that he undertook to drill the parents as well as the children; reading to them, every Saturday, a list of the mistakes they had committed during the week, in the management of their children. At another time, after he had taken a long journey on foot to meet an engagement in Warsaw, he found that he was not acceptable to the lady who was to employ him. Among other things, his French accent was deplorable. Fichte admitted the justice of her criticism, but claimed that it was as good as she had a right to expect; and, by the threat of legal proceedings, made her pay him for his trouble and disappointment. This was a very important event in his life, as, by the money that he thus received, he was able to take a vacation. He hurried to Königsberg to make the personal acquaintance of Kant.

I have spoken of the docility and the loyalty of Fichte. He was fortunate in having objects that called forth his deepest love and reverence. Leibnitz first aroused his boyish enthusiasm; the Fräulein Rahn, to whom he became engaged, and whom he afterward married, received from him an uninterrupted devotion that influenced very largely his life; while to the philosopher Kant, he yielded the whole homage of his youthful heart, and consecrated to him and his service his best powers. He held fast to this loyalty till Kant himself at last disowned the relationship.

I have compared Fichte to Carlyle. Happier than Carlyle, the craving of his spirit was to be satisfied by what he regarded as a gospel of joy and peace. He was to feel the power of this gospel in his own heart; and the utterance of it was to be the glad employment of his life.

It is strange how it is often by some apparent chance that we meet the great crises of our lives. Fichte was tutoring in such studies as offered themselves, when a young man expressed the wish to study with him the philosophy of Kant. Fichte assented, and perhaps did not think it worth while to inform the applicant that it would be first necessary to study Kant for himself. Thus it was that he met his destiny. While the external circumstances that led to his acquaintance with Kant seem so accidental, his spiritual development had reached the point that made this acquaintance essential to his peace. Indeed there can be no greater contrast than that between the way in which his spirit was growing into the need of Kant’s succor, and the outer chance that brought the needed relief.

It was always the habit of Fichte to think with his pen. We have a fragment that was written in the year 1790, in which is revealed the inner crisis which his life had reached. It is entitled “Aphorisms in Regard to Religion and Deism.” In it he recognizes the great chasm that exists between the elements of our nature, between the intellect and the heart. The intellect can see nothing but a necessity by which God and man are alike bound. Sin is nothing for which one can be blamed. It is nothing that admits of forgiveness. It and its consequences spring alike inevitably from the nature of the individual. The heart, on the other hand, can not be satisfied by such a scheme. What is to be done? The only thing to be done is to draw a line beyond which speculation shall not pass. But can one do this? Can one do it, when this way of thinking is natural to him, when it is ingrained in his very being?—Here the fragment breaks off. The struggle between the head and the heart seems to admit of no issue. They could not be at peace; yet neither could yield to the other. That very year he wrote to his friend in regard to the philosophy of Kant, “This has given me a peace such as I never knew before.” He had found, he says, “a philosophy that put his heart into harmony with his head,” and he bids his friend, “Henceforth trust only your feeling, even if you cannot confute the cavillers that would reason it down. They shall be confuted, and indeed they are confuted already, only they do not yet understand the confutation.”

To understand this sense of relief we must recognize the fact that Fichte had been entangled in a system of Determinism against which his spirit chafed, but from which he could find no relief. It was Kant who rescued him; and his reverence and his gratitude knew no bounds. He thanked him for everything, for peace in this life and for the hope of another; and wrote to a friend that he should devote the next years of his life to making the system of Kant known.

It should be noticed that it was not the theoretical part of Kant’s work that so moved him. At the time of writing the fragment just referred to, Fichte was familiar with Kant’s discussion of the Antinomies. It was the Practical Reason that stirred his heart. It was the fact that a place had been found for the autonomy of the spirit; the discovery that the rigid necessity which had imprisoned him belonged only to the world of the intellect. The spirit itself had created this world, and was free from its tyranny.

About this time, in part to win the appreciation of Kant, Fichte published his “Attempt at a Critique of all Revelation.” This work was conceived largely, though not wholly, in the Kantian spirit, and, through the accidental omission of the name of its author, it was received as an anonymous work of Kant. This mistake was the occasion of unbounded praise, which could not wholly be recalled when it was discovered that it was the production of an unknown student of theology. Shortly after, he published two treatises suggested by the French Revolution, that had stirred in his heart the largest hopes.

Of these writings, the first-named proved his good angel, and was the means of his obtaining a professorship at Jena. The writings on the French Revolution proved his bad angels. They gave him the reputation of being revolutionary and democratic in his thoughts and wishes; they made the obtaining of the Jena professorship somewhat difficult; they made him an object of suspicion at Jena; and finally, as he believed, were the real cause of his losing that position. Had Fichte been a man of facile manners and tact, these difficulties would, it is probable, have soon disappeared. The opposite, however, was true. He made enemies, and sometimes thwarted the well meant efforts of his friends.

Considering everything, Fichte must be regarded as the ideal professor. Few students have been so fortunate as those that were brought under his influence. His philosophical lectures were profound, original, and full of life. Few lectures can have put a greater strain upon the minds of the listeners than these, and few lectures so abstruse could have brought more inspiration. There was a special inspiration to the students in the thought that a new System of philosophy, or, as many of them doubtless believed, the final philosophy, was being unrolled for the first time before their eyes.

Fichte, however, felt that with this scholastic labor his work was only half done. He had always the soul and the heart of a preacher. He yearned over the young lives that were about him, and could not rest without trying to help them. He undertook to give to the students lectures more popular and more directly stimulating to the spiritual nature than those which he gave officially. His lectures on the “Vocation of the Scholar” were thus given. They were received with enthusiasm by the students. It illustrates, however, the prejudice that existed against him, to notice the difficulties that were placed in his way. At one time the objection was that these lectures were given on Sunday, and thus put themselves into rivalry with the Church; although, in fact, the hours selected were those which the Church had left unclaimed.

He saw the evils of the secret societies, which played a great part in the life of the student. He affected the students so strongly that they made overtures toward the dissolution of the fraternities. Had Fichte been the self-asserting man that he is often painted, he would have brought this matter to a happy conclusion. As it was, he put the affair into the hands of the Faculty, who managed it with such delays and such awkwardness that Fichte became to the students an object of suspicion. He was temporarily driven from the place by the fierceness of their misdirected wrath.

At Jena, the publication of Fichte’s philosophical system proceeded regularly and systematically. First came the “Principles of the Complete Science of Knowledge.” Then came the system of “ Natural Rights”; and, later, his system of “Ethics.” In these, his philosophy was gradually unfolded in its deeper significance. His philosophy of religion was to follow in its time. Had this development been completed, the system of Fichte would not have been the enigma that it has been.

This natural and healthy development of his system was, however, to be interrupted. The story of this interruption cannot here be given. It is enough to say that in a journal which he edited he brought forward his views of religion in their most negative and repellant form. Suspicion, as we have seen, was already turned toward him, and this publication brought all the hostile elements into activity. Possibly, however, the publication would, without the previous suspicion, have been sufficient to cause the excitement. Formal complaints were lodged against Fichte. Never did his lack of tact and his directness of method show themselves more strongly than in his defence of himself against these charges. In one defence, he spoke of the hatred which similar misrepresentations had produced against Voltaire. Probably this placing of himself by the side of Voltaire was the very worst thing that he could have done for his own cause; but then he seems to have been thinking more of the cause of truth than of his own. On the other hand, he sent a letter to a member of the council that was to determine his fate, urging that, if the matter were decided against him, he and other professors would leave the University of Jena. This letter was taken as if it had been officially addressed to the council, and it was said that Fichte had used threats, to prevent censure. This letter determined the case. A censure was passed; it was assumed that Fichte had resigned, and his resignation was accepted. And though he, afterward, sought to explain, and withdraw the resignation, the withdrawal was not permitted.

The member of the council most active against Fichte was Goethe. Our chief interest in the matter is to compare these master spirits as they stood over against each other. Goethe would at first have saved Fichte by passing over or around the matter as easily as possible. He approached it as a diplomatist. Fichte would force the affair to its sharpest possible issue. When this was done, Goethe from being a diplomatist became the narrow official. He granted nothing to Fichte’s impetuous temperament; he forced into a letter that might have been regarded as private, the significance of an official document; and left Fichte no opportunity for reconsidering or explaining his ill considered act. Fichte left Jena, and the University has never regained the position which it then lost.

The importance of this transaction, to our present purpose, is the fact of the interruption which it brought to the elaboration by Fichte of his system. Henceforth it was given to the world in fragments instead of as a complete whole.

From Jena, Fichte went to Berlin, where, later, he filled a professorship. In his “Vocation of Man,” published in 1800, he gave what remains the best popular exposition of his system. Somewhat later, he prepared another presentation of it, conceived in a more profound and philosophical spirit. This presentation, prepared in 1801, though it has received comparatively little attention, is one of the most important of Fichte’s publications. It occupies an intermediate position between his earlier and later forms of treatment, and, more than any other work, supplies that common element which is needed for the comprehension of both. This was prepared for publication. Had it been published at the time, Fichte would have been far better understood than he is. Circumstances, however, again interfered, and its publication was prevented. The next work of great philosophical importance, which Fichte published, was his lectures on “The Way to the Blessed Life,” a work which seemed to have absolutely nothing in common with his earlier philosophy, and was regarded as the beginning of a wholly new career of philosophic thought. This view the world has held to a great extent, in the face of the fact that in the preface to this work Fichte affirmed that his philosophic standpoint was unchanged.

Besides these more philosophic works, in 1805 he gave lectures on “The Nature of the Scholar,” which were published in 1806. About the same time, he gave lectures on “The Characteristics of the Present Age,” which were also published. I have compared Fichte to Carlyle. Even had the comparison not been made before, it would have been forced upon us now in naming this latter work. Never was there a more terrible arraignment of a superficial and frivolous age.

Then came the troublous times of the French war. Fichte offered his service to the government. He would accompany the soldiers, many of whom were his pupils, and inspire them by his presence and his words. This service was declined. Berlin became occupied by the enemy. Fichte was a German to his heart’s core, and went into voluntary banishment, that he might not be forced to give in his submission to the invader. He returned in 1807, and then gave, in Berlin, within the very sound of the tramp of the hostile soldiery, those magnificent lectures to the German people, which have endeared him to the heart of every German. In them he recognizes the meaning and the mission of the German nationality. Earlier, he had, as we have seen, exposed the hollowness of the civilization in which he lived. Now, in the darkest moment of his nation’s history, he found signs of promise. He uttered to his people words of hope and cheer, while he pointed to the only ground upon which this hope could be securely based.

Here, at last, Fichte must be considered fortunate. All his life he had been burning to influence his fellow-men. He had chosen for the medium of his utterance a system of terminology which was largely regarded as ridiculous, as well as meaningless; and the high spirit of Fichte was stung by the ridicule, and was lonely in its isolation. Now, at last, the constraint and the disguise were thrown away. He stood a man among men. He stood a leader of men. The heart of the nation thrilled at his words. A century after his birth, although his philosophy was a sealed book to many of the scholars of Germany, the German people united in a tribute to his memory.

In every way, Fichte interested himself in the national cause. His wife devoted herself to the needs of the sick and suffering soldiers. She made herself a Sister of Charity, and nursed them in the hospitals. In the midst of her labors, and on account of them, she was smitten down with a malignant fever and lay at the point of death. The term of the University was to open, and the hour for Fichte’s lectures had come. He left his wife, doubtful if he should see her again in life, and went to the lecture-room whither he felt that his duty called him. When he returned, the crisis had passed and the peril was gone. Overjoyed, with a kiss he greeted his wife back to life. Doing this, he breathed in the contagion, and was prostrated by the fever, from which he did not recover.

Nothing in the life of Fichte better illustrates the two elements of his nature than this last scene of his life. To us it seems a mechanical sense of duty that led him from the bedside of his wife, whom he supposed to be dying, to his professor’s chair. If, however, we are tempted to think him a mere bit of formality, the creature of mechanical routine, we remember this self-forgetting kiss of joy and love, and feel that his spirit was one of the tenderest as well as, in the phrase of Goethe, “the doughtiest that has ever lived.”

I append, for convenience of reference, the leading dates in the life of Fichte:

He was born in 1762. He became a student of Kant in 1790. He entered upon his professorship at Jena in 1794, and left it in 1799. He died at Berlin, in [1814]. The period of his life in Jena is commonly reckoned as that of his earlier method in philosophy. When his whole career as a writer is considered, it is, however, divided into three periods, of which the life at Jena makes the second.