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150 In this state of mind Fichte journeyed, in the way of business, to accept a tutor’s position at Warsaw. He failed there to give satisfaction, because his French pronunciation was poor, and on his way back he called upon Kant at Königsberg, in July, 1791. The aged, prudent, and, as you will remember, highly economical philosopher regarded this reverent, fiery, but obviously impecunious young disciple with a certain suspicion, and received his confidences coolly. The rebuff only heated Fichte the more. He tarried in Königsberg two months, in order during that time to write, for presentation to Kant, a work on religious philosophy, which, once finished, proved to be so thoroughly in Kant’s spirit that, when in the spring of the next year the book was published anonymously, it was very generally hailed by Kant’s admirers as a new production of the master’s own genius. Kant himself had to correct this misapprehension, and in doing so named, and now with warm praise, the real author. Thus at one stroke, as it were, Fichte’s career was made. He had won the great philosopher’s approval and the ear of the public at the same time. Within another year he returned to Zürich. He was at length famous, and, as his beloved was now, by chance, even more obviously in comfortable circumstances than she had been at the time when she wrote the aforementioned highly practical letter, there was nothing further to hinder his marriage, which took place in October, 1793, and remained to the end a very happy one. In 1794 came the call to the University of Jena, which was then at the centre of the mental life of Germany.

Fichte’s career has thus been suggested to you through a sketch of its first important crisis. There is the same interesting union of the great, the ardent, the thoughtful,