LITMIR.BIZ

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id="ulink_e0551918-1333-5348-95b9-0b18941f150d">CHAPTER I.

       Table of Contents

      THE MAN.

      BEFORE 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,^[1] 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,”^[2] 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

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