CHAPTER XI THE GERMAN IDEALISTS Idealism after Kant. Kant's criticism became the point of departure of many differing systems. A modern German professor in the University of Berlin has been wont to say, "There are ten interpretations of Kant's Critique, which are the ten kinds of philosophy at the present time." The incoherence of Kant's philosophy made it famous. At the time that it became popular, the teaching of Spinoza was resurrected from its long sleep and introduced into Germany. Kant was the "all-crushing" critic; Spinoza was the dogmatic mystic. Their opposition did not amount to a contradiction, but was of the correlative sort. Kant and Spinoza became the two intellectual foci about which revolved the thought of the generation after Kant. All the succeeding philosophers show Kant's influence upon them, for they all accept his epistemology. They show the influence of Spinoza in varying degrees. The philosophers whom we shall now meet may be divided into groups. The first group consists of Rheinhold, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. These took the lead in destroying the Kantian conception of the thingin-itself and in constructing a pure idealism. The second group consists of Herbart and Schopenhauer. These tried in different ways to develop a metaphysics of the thing-in-itself. A third group consisted of the old Wolffian Rationalistic School, which was, however, unsuc cessful in its opposition to the spread of the doctrines of Kant and Spinoza. A summary of the leaders of the German thought of this time would not be complete without mention, lastly, of the miscellaneous group of literary Romanticists, whose writings partook of the philosophical spirit. The influence of Spinoza is especially prominent in this group. Jean Paul Richter (1763-1825) was the forerunner of this movement, and it included the names of Tieck, Wackenroder, the two Schlegels, Novalis, the two Romantic women, - Dorothea and Caroline, — Schiller, and Goethe. The poet Schiller did much to popularize Kant's aesthetic and moral doctrines. Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. This group of disciples of Kant can be understood sympathetically only in the light of their age. They were not philosophical adventurers, otherwise the great representative of the age, Goethe, would not have associated with Schelling and Hegel on equal terms. They stood for the revulsion of the period against all external systems, and for the realization of a spiritual realm of free spirits. They sought not a factitious and imaginary condition, but tried rather to discover the essentials of the spiritual life. They would reclaim reality spiritually, and their only defect was in their haste in carrying out their principles. Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel are sharers in one common movement. They tried systematically to present the evolution of the world as an unbroken evolution of thought. They went back to Kant, but they were bolder than he. They sought to transcend the limitations of thought which he had laid down. They would set thought free, and, gazing in upon their own spirits, they would find there the whole infinite universe. While Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel look at the world each in his own way, they are members of one common movement toward spiritual freedom, and toward the reëstablishment of metaphysics. The Life and Writings of Fichte (1762-1814). Johann Gottlieb Fichte was the most notable of the immediate disciples of Kant. In contrast with the undisturbed and uneventful scholastic retirement of his master, Fichte's life looms up as a series of conflicts, sometimes with extreme poverty and sometimes with hostile forces created by his own stubborn and irascible disposition. Fichte's external life was throughout one of curious contrasts, both of tragedy and romance. His love for the moral and theological appears in his early youth in his voluntary self-denial and in his sermons to the geese which he was herding. Again, he made preparation to become a preacher, but his intellectual training in the university drove him to abandon it. He became a necessitarian and tried to square his life with his philosophy, although it weighed his heart down. Then came the so-called " Atheistic Controversy" when he was professor at Jena, and his defiance of the authorities and his dismissal. In the tumultuous days at Berlin he turned his metaphysics into patriotic appeals, and would have joined the army, but his death intervened. The inner development of Fichte, too, was different from that of Kant. Kant's inner development was coincident with his long life. Fichte, on the other hand, at the age of twenty-eight had read and accepted Kant's philosophy, and four years later had created his own. This was only slightly modified in his later years in the direction of the pantheism of Spinoza. Kant's life was apart from the political current of his time, while his doctrine became fundamental for all future philosophy. Fichte's life and philosophy were more expressive of his time, but less lasting in their influence. Fichte is the philosophic preacher to his time; Kant is the instructor of all time. Fichte's life may be divided into four periods, which are marked by certain external events. 1. His Education (1762–1790). He was the son of a poor ribbon-maker. As a boy he worked for his father, and again at the equally humble employment of herding geese. It was during this latter occupation that his wonderful memory attracted the attention of a philanthropic nobleman, who gave him means for an education. Fichte studied theology, philosophy, and philology at Leipsic and Jena; but he had to face extreme poverty again upon the death of his benefactor. In 1788 he got a position as tutor in Zürich, and here he met Pestalozzi, Lavater, and his future wife, a niece of the poet, Klopstock. During this period his philosophy was a necessitarianism, which he had evolved from the theology in which he was trained and his reading of certain books on Spinoza. 2. Discipleship of Kant (1790-1794). Fichte returned from Zürich to Leipsic, and in the capacity of tutor in philosophy he assisted a young man in the reading of Kant's Critique. He was at once converted heart and soul to the Kantian doctrine. In 1791 he called on Kant at Königsberg and submitted to Kant his Critique of Revelation. The next year he published this work, and by some fortunate accident his name as author was omitted from the title-page. The work was attributed to Kant, and was widely read as a masterpiece by Kant. Kant had to correct the mistake, which, し |