mysticism. From another master it received an impulse toward heroism.
This master was Johann Gottlieb Fichte, born at Rammenau, in Upper
Lusatia, on the 19th of May, 1762. A short memoir of him by William
Smith, published in 1845, with a translation of the "Nature of the
Scholar," and reprinted in Boston, excited a deep interest among people
who had neither sympathy with his philosophy nor intelligence to
comprehend it. He was a great mind, and a greater character--sensitive,
proud, brave, determined, enthusiastic, imperious, aspiring; a mighty
soul; "a cold, colossal, adamantine spirit, standing erect and clear,
like a Cato Major among degenerate men; fit to have been the teacher of
the Stoa, and to have discoursed of beauty and virtue in the groves of
Academe! So robust an intellect, a soul so calm, so lofty, massive, and
immovable, has not mingled in philosophical discussion since the time of
Luther. For the man rises before us amid contradiction and debate like a
granite mountain amid clouds and winds. As a man approved by action and
suffering, in his life and in his death, he ranks with a class of men
who were common only in better ages than ours." Thus wrote Thomas
Carlyle of him more than a generation ago.
The direction given to philosophy by such a man could not but be decided
and bold. His short treatises, all marked by intellectual power, some by
glowing eloquence, carried his thoughts beyond the philosophical circle
and spread his leading principles far beyond the usual speculative
lines. "The Destination of Man," "The Vocation of the Scholar," "The
Nature of the Scholar," "The Vocation of Man," "The Characteristics of
the Present Age," "The Way towards the Blessed Life," were translated
into English, published in the "Catholic Series" of John Chapman, and
extensively read. The English reviewers helped to make the author and
his ideas known to many readers.
The contribution that Fichte made to the transcendental philosophy may
be described without using many words. He became acquainted with Kant's
system in Leipsic, where he was teaching, in 1790. The effect it had on
him is described in letters to his friends. To one he wrote: "The last
four or five months which I have passed in Leipsic have been the
happiest of my life; and the most satisfactory part of it is, that I
have to thank no man for the smallest ingredient in its pleasures. When
I came to Leipsic my brain swarmed with great plans. All were wrecked;
and of so many soap-bubbles there now remains not even the light froth
that composed them. This disturbed a little my peace of mind, and half
in despair I joined a party to which I should long ere this have
belonged. Since I could not alter my outward condition, I resolved on
internal change. I threw myself into philosophy, and, as you know, the
Kantean. Here I found the remedy for my ills, and joy enough to boot.
The influence of this philosophy, the moral part of it in particular
(which, however, is unintelligible without previous study of the
'Critique of Pure Reason'), on the whole spiritual life, and especially
the revolution it has caused in my own mode of thought, is
indescribable." To another he wrote in similar strain: "I have lived in
a new world since reading the 'Critique of Pure Reason.' Principles I
believed irrefragable are refuted; things I thought could never be
proved--the idea of absolute freedom, of duty, for example--are
demonstrated; and I am so much the happier. It is indescribable what
respect for humanity, what power this system gives us. What a blessing
to an age in which morality was torn up by the roots, and the word duty
blotted out of the dictionary!" To Johanna Rahn he expresses himself in
still heartier terms: "My scheming mind has found rest at last, and I
thank Providence that shortly before all my hopes were frustrated I was
placed in a position which enabled me to bear the disappointment with
cheerfulness. A circumstance that seemed the result of mere chance
induced me to devote myself entirely to the study of the Kantean
philosophy--a philosophy that restrains the imagination, always too
strong with me, gives reason sway, and raises the soul to an unspeakable
height above all earthly concerns. I have accepted a nobler morality,
and instead of busying myself with outward things, I concern myself
more with my own being. It has given me a peace such as I never before
experienced; amid uncertain worldly prospects I have passed my happiest
days. It is difficult beyond all conception, and stands greatly in need
of simplification.... The first elements are hard speculations, that
have no direct bearing on human life, but their conclusions are most
important for an age whose morality is corrupted at the fountain head;
and to set these consequences before the world would, I believe, be
doing it a good service. I am now thoroughly convinced that the human
will is free, and that to be happy is not the purpose of our being, but
to deserve happiness." So great was Fichte's admiration of Kant's
system, that he became at once an expositor of its principles, in the
hope that he might render it intelligible and attractive to minds of
ordinary culture.
Fichte considered himself a pure Kantean, perhaps the only absolutely
consistent one there was; and that he did so is not surprising; for, in
mending the master's positions, he seemed to be strengthening them
against assault. He did not, like Jacobi, draw inferences which Kant had
laboriously, and, as it seemed, effectually cut off; he merely
entrenched himself within the lines the philosopher of Koenigsberg had
drawn. Kant had, so his critics charged, taken for granted the reality
of our perceptions of outward things. This was the weak point in his
system, of which his adversaries took advantage. On this side he allowed
empiricism to construct his wall, and left incautiously an opening which
the keen-sighted foe perceived at once. Fichte bethought him to fortify
that point, and thus make the philosophy unassailable; to take it, in
fact, out of the category of a philosophical system, and give it the
character of a science. To this end, with infinite pains and incredible
labor, he tested the foundations to discover the fundamental and final
facts which rested on the solid rock. The ultimate facts of
consciousness were in question.
Fichte accepted without hesitation the confinement within the limits of
consciousness against which Jacobi rebelled, and proceeded to make the
prison worthy of such an occupant. The facts of consciousness, he
admitted, are all we have. The states and activities of the mind,
perceptions, ideas, judgments, sentiments, or by whatever other name
they may be called, constitute, by his admission, all our knowledge, and
beyond them we cannot go. They are, however, solid and substantial. Of
the outward world he knew nothing and had nothing to say; he was not
concerned with that. The mind is the man; the history of the mind is the
man's history; the processes of the mind report the whole of experience;
the phenomena of the external universe are mere phenomena, reflections,
so far as we know, of our thought; the mountains, woods, stars, are
facts of consciousness, to which we attach these names. To infer that
they exist because we have ideas of them, is illegitimate in philosophy.
The ideas stand by themselves, and are sufficient of themselves.
The mind is first, foremost, creative and supreme. It takes the
initiative in all processes. He that assumes the existence of an
external world does so on the authority of consciousness. If he says
that consciousness compels us to assume the existence of such a world,
that it is so constituted as to imply the realization of its conception,
still we have simply the fact of consciousness; power to verify the
relation between this inner fact and a corresponding physical
representation, there is none. Analyze the facts of consciousness as
much as we may, revise them, compare them, we are still within their
circle and cannot pass beyond its limit. Is it urged that the existence
of an external world is a _necessary_ postulate? The same reply avails,
namely, that the idea of necessity is but one of our ideas, a conception
of the mind, an inner notion or impression which legitimates itself
alone. Does the objector further insist, in a tone of exasperation
caused by what seems to him quibbling, that in this case consciousness
plays us false, makes a promise to the ear which it breaks to the
hope--lies, in short? The imperturbable philosopher sets aside the
insinuation as an impertinence. The fact of consciousness, he maintains,
stands and testifies for itself. It is not answerable for anything out
of its sphere. In saying what it does it speaks the truth; the whole
truth, so far as we can determine. Whether or no it is absolutely the
whole truth, the truth as it lies in a mind otherwise constituted, is no
concern of ours.
The reasoning by which Fichte cut off the certainty of a material world
outside of the mind, told with equal force against the objective
existence of a spiritual world. The mental vision being bounded by the
mental sphere, its objects being there and only there, with them we
must be content. The soul has its domain, untrodden forests to explore,
silent and trackless ways to follow, mystery to rest in, light to walk
by, fountains and floods of living water, starry firmaments of thought,
continents of reason, zones of law, and with this domain it must be
satisfied. God is one of its ideas; immortality is another; that they
are anything more than ideas, cannot be known.
That the charge of atheism should be brought against so uncompromising a
thinker, is a less grave imputation upon the discernment of his
contemporaries than ordinarily it is. That he should have been obliged,
in consequence of it, to leave Jena, and seek an asylum in Prussia, need
not excite indignation, at least in those who remember his unwillingness
or inability to modify his view, or explain the sense in which he called
himself a believer. To "charge" a man with atheism, as if atheism were
guilt, is a folly to be ashamed of; but to "class" a man among atheists
who _in no sense_ accepts the doctrine of an intelligent, creative
Cause, is just, while language has meaning. And this is Fichte's
position. In his philosophy there was no place for assurance of a Being
corresponding to the mental conception. The word "God" with him
expressed the category of the Ideal. The world being but the incarnation
of our sense of duty, the reflection of the mind, the creator of it is
the mind. God, being a reflection of the soul in its own atmosphere, is
one of the soul's creations, a shadow on the surface of a pool. The soul
creates; deity is created. This is not even ideal atheism, like that of
Etienne Vacherot; it may be much nobler and more inspiring than the
recognized forms of theism; it is dogmatic or speculative atheism only:
but that it is, and that it should confess itself. It was natural that
Fichte, being perfect master of his thought, should disclaim and resent
an imputation which in spirit he felt was undeserved. It was natural
that people who were not masters of his thought, and would not have
appreciated it if they had been, should judge him by the only
definitions they had. Berkeley and Fichte stood at opposite extremes in
their Idealism. Berkeley, starting from the theological conception of
God, maintained that the outward world had a real existence in the
supreme mind, being phenomenal only to the human. Fichte, starting from
the human mind, contended that it was _altogether_ phenomenal, the
supreme mind itself being phantasmal.
How came it, some will naturally ask, that such a man escaped the deadly
consequences of such resolute introspection? Where was there the
indispensable basis for action and reaction? Life is conditioned by
limitation; the shore gives character to the sea; the outward world
gives character to the man, excites his energy, defines his aim, trains
his perception, educates his will, offers a horizon to his hope. The
outward world being removed, dissipated, resolved into impalpable
thought, what substitute for it can be devised? Must not the man sink
into a visionary, and waste his life in dream?
That Fichte was practically no dreamer, has already been said. The man
who closed a severe, stately, and glowing lecture on duty with the
announcement--it was in 1813, when the French drums were rattling in
the street, at times drowning the speaker's voice--that the course would
be suspended till the close of the campaign, and would be resumed, if
resumed at all, in a free country, and thereupon, with a German
patriot's enthusiasm, rushed himself into the field--this man was no
visionary, lost in dreams. The internal world was with him a living
world; the mind was a living energy; ideas were things; principles were
verities; the laws of thought were laws of being. So intense was his
feeling of the substantial nature of these invisible entities, that the
obverse side of them, the negation of them, had all the _vis inertia_,
all the objective validity of external things. He spoke of "absolute
limitations," "inexplicable limitations," against which the mind pressed
as against palpable obstacles, and in pressing against which it acquired
tension and vigor. Passing from the realm of speculation into that of
practice, the obstacles assumed the attributes of powers, the
impediments became foes, to be resisted as strenuously as ever soldier
opposed soldier in battle. From the strength of this conviction he was
enabled to say: "I am well convinced that this life is not a scene of
enjoyment, but of labor and toil, and that every joy is granted but to
strengthen us for further exertion; that the control of our fate is not
required of us, but only our self-culture. I give myself no concern
about external things; I endeavor to _be_, not to _seem_; I am no man's
master, and no man's slave."
Fichte was a sublime egoist. In his view, the mind was sovereign and
absolute, capable of spontaneous, self-determined, originating action,
having power to propose its own end and pursue its own freely-chosen
course; a live intelligence, eagerly striving after self-development, to
fulfil all the possibilities of its nature. Of one thing he was
certain--the reality of the rational soul, and in that certainty lay the
ground of his tremendous weight of assertion. His professional chair was
a throne; his discourses were prophecies; his tone was the tone of an
oracle. It made the blood burn to hear him; it makes the blood burn at
this distance to read his printed words. To cite a few sentences from
his writings in illustration of the man's way of dealing with the great
problems of life, is almost a necessity. The following often-quoted but
pregnant passage is from "The Destination of Man:" "I understand thee
now, spirit sublime! I have found the organ by which to apprehend this
reality, and probably all other. It is not knowledge, for knowledge can
only demonstrate and establish itself; every kind of knowledge supposes
some higher knowledge upon which it is founded; and of this ascent there
is no end. It is faith, that voluntary repose in the ideas that
naturally come to us, because through these only we can fulfil our
destiny; which sets its seal on knowledge, and raises to conviction, to
certainty, what, without it, might be sheer delusion. It is not
knowledge, but a resolve to commit one's self to knowledge. No merely
verbal distinction this, but a true and deep one, charged with momentous
consequences to the whole character. All conviction is of faith, and
proceeds from the heart, not from the understanding. Knowing this, I
will enter into no controversy, for I foresee that in this way nothing
can be gained. I will not endeavor, by reasoning, to press my conviction
on others, nor will I be discouraged if such an attempt should fail. My
mode of thinking I have adopted for myself, not for others, and to
myself only need I justify it. Whoever has the same upright intention
will also attain the same or a similar conviction, and without it that
is impossible. Now that I know this, I know also from what point all
culture of myself and others must proceed; from the will, and not from
the understanding. Let but the first be steadily directed toward the
good, the last will of itself apprehend the true. Should the last be
exercised and developed, while the first remains neglected, nothing can
result but a facility in vain and endless refinements of sophistry. In
faith I possess the test of all truth and all conviction; truth
originates in the conscience, and what contradicts its authority, or
makes us unwilling or incapable of rendering obedience to it, is most
certainly false, even should I be unable to discover the fallacies
through which it is reached.... What unity, what completeness and
dignity, our human nature receives from this view! Our thought is not
based on itself, independently of our instincts and inclinations. Man
does not consist of two beings running parallel to each other; he is
absolutely one. Our entire system of thought is founded on intuition; as
is the heart of the individual, so is his knowledge."
"The everlasting world now rises before me more brightly, and the
fundamental laws of its order are more clearly revealed to my mental
vision. The will alone, lying hid from mortal eyes in the obscurest
depths of the soul, is the first link in a chain of consequences that
stretches through the invisible realm of spirit, as, in this terrestrial
world, the action itself, a certain movement communicated to matter, is
the first link in a material chain that encircles the whole system. The
will is the effective cause, the living principle of the world of
spirit, as motion is of the world of sense. The will is in itself a
constituent part of the transcendental world. By my free determination I
change and set in motion something in this transcendental world, and my
energy gives birth to an effect that is new, permanent, and
imperishable. Let this will find expression in a practical deed, and
this deed belongs to the world of sense and produces effects according
to the virtue it contains."
This is the stoical aspect of the doctrine. The softer side of it
appears throughout the book that is entitled "The Way towards the
Blessed Life." We quote a few passages from the many the eloquence
whereof does no more than justice to the depth of sentiment:
"Full surely there is a blessedness beyond the grave for those who have
already entered on it here, and in no other form than that wherein they
know it here, at any moment. By mere burial man arrives not at bliss;
and in the future life, throughout its whole infinite range, they will
seek for happiness as vainly as they sought it here, who seek it in
aught else than that which so closely surrounds them here--the
Infinite."
"Religion consists herein, that man in his own person, with his own
spiritual eye, immediately beholds and possesses God. This, however, is
possible through pure independent thought alone; for only through this
does man assume real personality, and this alone is the eye to which God
becomes visible. Pure thought is itself the divine existence; and
conversely, the divine existence, in its immediate essence, is nothing
else than pure thought."
"The truly religious man conceives of his world as action, which,
because it is his world, he alone creates, in which alone he can live
and find satisfaction. This action he does not will for the sake of
results in the world of sense; he is in no respect anxious in regard to
results, for he lives in action simply as action; he wills it because it
is the will of God in him, and his own peculiar portion in being."
"As to those in whom the will of God is not inwardly
accomplished,--because there is no inward life in them, for they are
altogether outward,--upon them the will of God is wrought as alone it
can be; appearing at first sight bitter and ungracious, though in
reality merciful and loving in the highest degree. To those who do not
love God, all things must work together immediately for pain and
torment, until, by means of the tribulation, they are led to salvation
at last."
Language like this from less earnest lips might be deceptive; but from
the lips of a teacher like Fichte it tells of the solid grandeurs that
faithful men possess in the ideal creations of their souls; the
habitableness of air-castles.
SCHELLING.
The chief sources from which the transcendental philosophy came from
Germany to America have been indicated. The traces of Jacobi and Fichte
are broad and distinct on the mind of the New World. Of Schelling little
need be said, for his works were not translated into English, and the
French translation of the "Transcendental Idealism" was not announced
till 1850, when the movement in New England was subsiding. His system
was too abstract and technical in form to interest any but his
countrymen. Coleridge was fascinated by it, and yielded to the
fascination so far as to allow the thoughts of the German metaphysician
to take possession of his mind; but for Coleridge, indeed, few
English-speaking men would have known what the system was.
Transcendentalism in New England was rather spiritual and practical than
metaphysical. Jacobi and Fichte were both; it can scarcely be said that
Schelling was either. His books were hard; his ideas underwent continual
changes in detail; his speculative system was developed gradually in a
long course of years. But for certain grandiose conceptions which had a
charm for the imagination and fascinated the religious sentiment, his
name need not be mentioned in this little incidental record at all.
There was, however, in Schelling something that recalled the ideal side
of Plato, more that suggested Plotinus, the neo-Platonists and
Alexandrines, a mystical pantheistic quality that mingled well with the
general elements of Idealism, and gave atmosphere, as it were, to the
tender feeling of Jacobi and the heroic will of Fichte.
Schelling was Fichte's disciple, filled his vacant chair in Jena in
1798, and took his philosophical departure from certain of his
positions. Fichte had shut the man up close in himself, had limited the
conception of the world by the boundaries of consciousness, had reduced
the inner universe to a full-orbed creation, made its facts substantial
and its fancies solid, peopled it with living forces, and found room in
it for the exercise of a complete moral and spiritual life. In his
system the soul was creator. The outer universe had its being in human
thought. Subject and object were one, and that one was the subject.