Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu/200

 from the individualist theory; the latter, its completion. And between them fall two treatises of a more popular nature: Die Grundlage des gegenwärtigen Zeitaltern (1804-6) and the famous Reden an die deutsche Nation (1807-8). It is in the two last and in the Staatslehre that Fichte works out the collectivist theory which replaced the individualism of his youth.

Much the same ground was traversed by Carlyle. It is clear that he too started as an individualist. And he too though more rapidly than Fichte, broke roughly with the tradition in which he had been reared. The original impulse to this change came, in all probability, less from any outward influence than from his own reflection and the condition of the time. He had the keenest eye for social wrongs; and the moment he began to think seriously on such subjects, it must have been abundantly clear to him that, great as were the services which it had rendered to men, the worst wrongs of all—the enslavement of labour to capital, for example—were just the wrongs which individualism was powerless to cure. It may be doubted, moreover whether so masterful a spirit could ever have heartily recognized such merits as the individualist theory can fairly claim. Both by temper and by social sympathy, therefore it is probable that, even apart from external influences Carlyle would ultimately have been driven from the camp of the individualist reformers. But the same argument would hold good of his metaphysical and religious convictions. Yet there we have seen that the change, to which he was doubtless impelled by temperament, was unquestionably both hastened and guided by the influence of the Germans. The probability, therefore, is that in political theory, as in other matters, external influence—and once again, the in-