5. The contradiction which presents itself in this can only be solved by the supposition that the Ego itself posits the nonEgo.

6. That the Ego posits this particular non-Ego in each case, and not another, points to and involves a necessary though inexplicable self-limitation of the Ego, whereby equally, on the one side, the Ego is determined as passive by the non-Ego, and, conversely, the non-Ego is determined as active power by the Ego.

7. Hereby then the external world, the objective, the non-Ego, becomes purely idealistically a subjective though not arbitrary product of the Ego or thinking subject. The non-Ego not merely as Phænomenon, but also as Nooumenon, is robbed of all reality outside of the Ego. The objective, that which is perceived in the forms of space and timė, has no existence in itself independently of the Ego,-that is, of the thinking subject.

8. This Ego is not, however, even in the first period of the Fichtean philosophy, the individual empirical Ego of one particular man, but the personality (the Egoity, Ichheit), the universal Ego (the pure Ego). . . . Everything which in the ordinary conception is thought of as object, over against man as subject, is a self-revelation or self-objectivating, not of his Ego, but of the universal Ego, or of the universal thinking, which, operating in all individuals in accordance with the same laws, counter-posits the same non-. -Ego.1

II. 1. For, if the intelligent Ego is determined by the nonEgo, and is so far limited and in some measure dependent, the practical Ego, on the contrary, is absolute and free, and hence unlimited and the only true reality.

2. The practical Ego is conjoined with the intelligent Ego because the former is related to the latter as the cause is related to the effect.

3. To wit: the absolute Ego, as free, has causality which reveals itself through the effort of actuating itself as cause.

4. But that effort, of necessity, has a certain determinate quantity of activity, because it always exerts itself to become the cause of some determinate thing, which, as determinate, must be

1 Geschichte der Relig. u. Philosophie. Aus dem Holländischen v. Redepenning, 1868, 154, 155.

limited hence the activity of the Ego, which in itself and in its own proper force is infinite, is in act always limited.

5. But this limitation cannot take place except through the counter-effort or resistance by which it comes to pass that the effort of the Ego is thrown back upon the Ego itself, and thus the Ego opposes a counter-effort or resistance to its own effort; from which arises the non-Ego, by which Fichte means that appulse or opposition in the Ego itself.

6. Hence the Ego acts upon the non-Ego, thus posited, by determining it in as far as the Ego is causality; but the non-Ego reacts upon the Ego and relatively to it, and this reaction becomes causality.

7. Hence arises that mutual action between the Ego and the non-Ego which we call the world (zospos), by which it comes to pass that the Ego (as intelligent or understanding) is on the one side dependent on the world or zoopos, while on the other side the Ego (as practical) is absolutely free.

III. 1. But, although the Ego be absolutely free, it nevertheless perceives itself bound by the conception of duty,—a conception which manifests itself in the manner of an Imperative, and impels to the equipoise, co-ordination, or harmony of the Ego and the non-Ego,-i.e. to what Fichte calls 'the realization of the moral order in the world.'1

2. This moral order of the world, in which every duty is founded, and to the realization of which the practical Ego puts forth its effort, is the divinity, the essential being of which is, consequently, the sole object of faith.

3. Whoever realizes for himself and as his own this order, in that measure approximates to the divinity and walks in that true life which is of God. But he who hinders or disturbs this moral order in his own case, sunders himself from the divinity.

4. Hence virtue consists in the perfect harmony of knowledge and action, in order to the free realization of this moral order. These views are developed in Fichte's work 'On the Ground of our Faith in the Divine Government of the World.

The views here presented received important modification in what is called the second period of Fichte. His nature was too

Zur Realisirung der moralischen Weltordnung.

essentially religious to rest in the dreary abstraction which substituted a moral order for a personal Deity. That position seemed to be equivalent to atheism. It might preserve the name of Deity, but it denied the thing. In the later thinking of Fichte, he brings out, with far greater clearness, that the Ego is not the limited human consciousness, but is God, the primeval original consciousness, what he calls the absolute subject-object (the Eternal One), the eternal universal reason, whose life reveals itself in the infinite multiplicity of relations. This God, thus defined, he regards as the ultimate reason of all,—that is, of all essential being. God is the infinite thinking, the sum of whose eternal thoughts is the universe. Jacobi happily characterized Fichte's doctrine as an inverted-an idealistic-Spinozism.2

Fichte, although greatly influential on the later thinking, can hardly be said to have established a school, though he had a number of devoted admirers. One reason, doubtless, of his establishing no distinct school was that his system was met by the elaborate system of Schelling, who endeavoured to meet the defects of both the transcendental and the subjective idealism by fusing them into the system of Absolute Identity.

XI. Objective Idealism: Schelling.

OBJECTIVE IDEALISM, the system of SCHELLING (1775-1854): the system of Identity, the identity of thinking and being even independently of the Ego. In the Absolute, the object, or non-Ego, and the subject, or Ego, are identical. 'Nature sleeps in the plant, dreams in the animal, wakes in man.' Transcendental philosophy is the history of consciousness. Ideas are mediators between God and things. The Universe is the self-revelation of the Absolute Subject. Nature is visible Spirit; Spirit is invisible Nature. In Nature there is a self-objectivating and revelation of the Spirit, of whom it may be said that he not only thinks

Rothenflue, iii. 291–294.

2 Scholtens, 158. The English reader will find of great value in attaining a knowledge of Fichte: 1. The Science of Knowledge, by J. G. Fichte. Translated from the German by A. E. Kroeger. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1868. 2. The Science of Right, by J. G. Fichte. Translated from the German by A. E. Kroeger. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1869. For an estimate of Fichte's life and character, see Zeller, 599.

himself, but in Nature also actualizes himself. The Universe or the Absolute is an Organism, which stretches forth from one formative principle into the evolutions of a graduated unfolding. This supreme Principle, this organizing Idea, the Ego of Fichte, is called by Schelling the Soul of the world.1

Schelling at first occupied the position of Idealism as maintained by Fichte, but subsequently rejected it as unsatisfactory to reason, and laid down as the basis of a new system that the primary principle of all essence or real being and of cognition is in the Absolute, considered as the complete identity of the subjective and objective. Fichte, as we have seen, laid down as the principle of all being and cognition the subjective Ego. Schelling showed, with equal right, that the objective non-Ego, or Nature, could be laid down as the principle of being and cognition. This had been laid down by Spinoza, who had inverted the process of Fichte. As Fichte deduced or constructed the whole non-Ego, or Nature, out of his own subjective Ego, Spinoza had deduced the Ego from the objectively real,-the nonEgo, or Nature. But, according to Schelling, both Ego and non-Ego are relative, and hence ought to be referred to a principle above and beyond both; and this principle, he held, was supplied in the system of absolute identity, according to which all essence and cognition, all matter and spirit, are identified in the Absolute as their ultimate reason. But this absolute identity of the subjective and objective in philosophy is not susceptible of proof in the strict sense,-i.e. it cannot be known mediately or by process of reasoning, inasmuch as it is itself the principle, the beginning of all knowledge, and that which begins cannot follow. But it can be proved that without it all knowledge is impossible, inasmuch as the conformity of knowledge to the object known, which is essentially prerequisite to all knowledge, cannot be conceived of unless the absolute identity of the subject knowing and of the object known be presupposed. Hence, according to Schelling, the absolute identity or absolute indifference-ie. the equivalence or perfect unity-of what are called different things is the principle, the unity, the centre of all science, as it is the centre of all existence; and immediate per

Scholten, 161.

ception, or the pure intuition of reason, is the sole organ or medium by which man can reach the spring of all truth. The views of Schelling are developed in his Sketch of the Philosophy · of Nature, in his System of Transcendental Idealism, in hi swork on the Relation of the Real and the Ideal in Nature, his Annals of Medicine as a Science, and in a Collection of his smaller writings. His system may be stated under two general heads:

I. 1. Philosophy is the science of the Absolute, as the complete identity both of the subjective and the objective, or the indifference or equivalence of things which are called different, in which difference or identity the essence of the Absolute (i.e. of God) consists.

2. Hence the Absolute is neither the Infinite nor the Finite,neither essence nor cognition, neither subject nor object,—but it is that in which all opposition between cognition and essence, between the spirit and nature, between the ideal and the real, and, in fine, all difference, is removed, and the absolute identity, the absolute indifference, or equivalence and unity, is constituted, which is at the same time all that is, or is the whole,―the all.

3. Hence this absolute identity alone truly is or has essence: outside of it nothing actually is.

4. Hence this absolute identity is the one only substance, and this substance is God.

II. 1. For God primarily posits or affirms his own essential existence. His proper self and existence once posited, God, in virtue of the idea alone, is the absolute identity of the universe.

2. To wit: God, positing himself, posits himself in ways infinitely manifold,-i.e. produces a diversity of entities which are nothing but modes or forms of existence of the one absolute identity. This production or outgoing or emanation is sometimes revealed, according to Schelling, as a differentiation or dualization (Entzweiung, Differenzirung) of the Absolute; sometimes as a manifestation of himself; sometimes as a defection of the Finite from the Infinite,-that is, of ideas from God,-which is virtually a self-defection on the part of God. The theory of

Entwurf der Naturphilosophie. System des transzendentalen Idealismus. Ueber das Verhaeltniss des Realen und Idealen in der Natur. Jahrbücher der Medizin als Wissenschaft. Sammlung kleinerer philosophischen Schriften.