Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/464

 442 FICHTE. absolute, separates from the active universal reason, which in its individual organs advances from task to task. The earlier undivided and unique principle, the absolute ego, divides into the IcJiheit (moral law, world-order), and an absolute as the ground thereof. " The spirit (the ego, or, as Fichte now prefers to say, knowledge) an image of God, the world an image of the spirit." The active order of the world (the moral law which realizes itself in individ- uals) the immediate, and objective reality the mediate, revelation of the absolute ! Does this view of religion, which Fichte incorporates also in the later expositions of the Science of Knowledge, indicate an abandonment and denial of the earlier stand- point ? The philosophy of Fichte's second period is a new system — so judge the majority of the historians of philoso- phy. It is not a transformation, but a completion of the earlier system ; the doctrine promulgated in Berlin con- tinues to be idealistic, as that advanced in Jena had itself been pantheistic — this is the opinion of Fortlage and Harms, in agreement with the philosopher himself and with his son. Kuno Fischer, also, who shows a constant advance in the development of Fichteanism, a gradual transition " without a break," may be counted among the minority who hold that throughout his life Fichte taught but one system. We believe it our duty to adhere to this latter view. The Science of Knowledge (the world a pro- duct of the ego) enters as it is into the later form of the Fichtean philosophy ; the latter gives up none of the fundamental positions of the former, but only adds to it a culmination, by which the appearance of the building is altered, it is true, but not the edifice itself. In the discus- sion of the question the following three have been empha- sized as the most important points of distinction between the Jwo pe^ jods : In the earlier system God is made equiva- lent to the absolute ego and the moral order of the world, in the later he is separated from these and removed beyond them ; in the former the nature of God is described as activity, in the latter, as being ; in the one, action is designated as the highest mission of man, in the other, I blessed devotion to God. All three variations of the later