Various contemporaries had found It strange that two regions so noterogeueous as those of mind and things in themselves (' dingo an sich') should at the same time be so admirably adapted to each other, that the latter should accommodate themselves to all the forms of the former; and at the same time, the taking of a common book of logic, sasuming all its dicta as self-evidcut axioms, seemed rather a mil srficial proceeding. The sceptical adversaries challenged the 1Cantists to prove that there was a necessary connection betwceu the form and the matter of knowledge.
Aroused by these attack; Fichte, as a disciple of Kant, began to inquire what was the absolute form of knowledge, and at the atm° lime what lay at the foundation of logic,the mere assumption of which, as a self-evident science, did not satisfy him. He saw that all logic depended on the propositions of identity and contradiction. ' A is A,' and' Nou-A is not A.' He then asked himself what is meant by ' A. is A ;' does it imply that A exiets / No, because the proposition A centaur is a centaur' is a true one, though the centaur does not exist at all. 'A is A' means no more than 'If A is given, it is A ;' and A is not A, provided it is not given (' gezetzt,' posited). ' Given' implies ' given to some conscious being; ' and hence we find that the truth even of au identical proposition depends on the being of no I or Ego (' des Ich '). The proposition ' A is A' is converted into ' Ego is Ego ;' and this is found to depend on no condition, as Ego gives itself, and its very essence consists in its giving itself. From this proposition is obtained the category of reality : reality is that which is giveu to the Ego. Iu like manner 'Non-A is not A' is converted into ' Non-Ego is not Ego ;' and from this proposition is obtained the category of nega tion. Then a question arises, ' How eau Ego posit Noo-Ego I' It is assumed as an axiom that everything in Ego is posited by itself ; how then can it posit a Non-Ego, which seems an act of self-destruction I It then turns out Ego posits itself, as determined by Non-Ego. An undetermined being is nothing; determioatiou implies limitation, and hence Ego, by positing itself as a determined being, at the same time posits Non-Ego. The Ego is conceived at first as an unimpeded activity ; it meets with a shock (' =sloes), which causes it to perform an act of reflection, and from this moment it begins to construct a world without itself. It feels itself confined by certain sensations, and hence imagines there must be a being external to itself supporting these sensations. At the same time the very consciousness of confine
ment implies a consciousness of the capability of freedom ; fur uo being can bo aware of a curb that is not striving against it. Freedom manifests itself in the power of directing the attention to some objects to the exclusion of others, or in the imagination of such as are absent. Thus a child who sees its first object cannot divert its attention from that object and think of another; it is completely curbed by the pre sent ; while a person wholes seen a variety cau at pleasure call forth a distant object, and close his mind's eye upon those immediately before him. This is a state of comparative freedom. It is impossible, in this limited apace, to follow the Wissenschaftslehre' through all ita rami fications; but what is given above will serve to convey an idea of the principle. Fichte's adversaries accused him of Nihilism and Atheism, and seem to have imngined that he thought be had constructed the whole universe. These objections are answered by his son, in an excel lent little book, entitled ' Beytriige sur Chnracteristik der neuorn Philosophic,' in which he shows that the very being of the Ego proves its own fluity, and that consequently his father's doctrine necessarily leads to the assumption of the absolute,' or God, a being that is infinite. In a tract called Die Wisscuschaftalehre in ihrem allge meioen Umrisso (Berlin, 1810), the elder Fichte says plainly that God is the only true being, and thus banishes nil euviciou of Atheism. Hie moral doctrines involve a contempt for nature, which he regards as a mere curb over which freedom should triumph; and heuce he is averse to all speculative physics, considering nature as the absolutely 'given' of which there can be no knowledge, and maklug all reality proceed from the knower,' he denies reality to the former. These opinions have led the philosophers of nature (' Natur-Philoso schen') to accuse him of ooe•sidcdaess. His son attributes this ten dency to the influence of the doctrines of Kant, which always treated nature as a mere appearance ('Erscheluung'), and from which Fichte never became absolutely free.
It Is hardly to be expected that the ' Wissenechnftelehre ' will bo rendered perfectly intelligible by the above short notice, when the reader might turn over the whole works of Fichte, and still find the subject, intensely difficult and obscure. The design of this article has been to give a hint of the principle, and no more.