poplars. It is also related of him that he was accustomed in lecturing to fix his eyes on a particular coat button of one of his auditors. One day the lecture was unaccountably confused and heavy, a perfect failure in fact. Thinking of the circumstance afterward, Kant remembered that the button was that day unfortunately missing, and coat being minus the button, the philosopher was minus his lecture.

CHAPTER XV.

SUCCESSORS OF KANT.

KANT had nicely distinguished the various faculties of the mind, but had not attempted to derive them from a common source, to trace them back to a single and primitive origin. The life of the soul, however, is a unique and single principle. It is one in its origin, and one in its end. The development of this principle is progressive, and is to be viewed in diverse aspects and results as understanding, judgment, reason, etc. What is this unity, this single fundamental principle of all psychological development, and all human knowledge? Let us search it out, and so place the philosophy of Kant on a better foundation and give it the completeness it needs. Thus reasoned the first successors of Kant, of whom Reinhold and Fichte are more especially worthy of notice.

§ 1. REINHOLD.

Born at Vienna, 1758; at first a Jesuit; after the dissolution of that order, a Barnabite monk and professor of philosophy in his convent; in 1783 embraces protestantism; 1787 professor at Jena. 1794 at Kiel, where he dies in 1823. He was a man of the world, a journalist, a man of brilliant and vivacious mind, but not the calm, patient, pro

found thinker, not the correct philosopher. His thoughts were often very just and weighty, but he was content to herald and announce them merely, leaving it to others to give them the correct expression. His influence on the public mind, however, was very great. He adopts the philosophy of Kant at its first appearance with enthusiasm, and writes a series of letters on it which were widely read, and with which Kant himself expressed great satisfaction. Seeking to place this philosophy, however, on a firmer basis, as already explained, he discovers, as he thinks, the fundamental principle of which he is in search, in the fact of consciousness or of perception, and bases human knowledge on the representative faculty. In the representative process, there is the subject which represents, the object represented, and also the act of representation itself, which unites the two,-their synthesis in the consciousness. Representation supposes in man, or the subject, a representative faculty, which precedes, of course, the exercise or act, and which comprises under it, sensible intuition, concept, idea, sensibility, understanding even, and reason. The principle of consciousness, then, which determines the representative faculty, is the elementary principle of knowledge, and of all philosophy.

§ 2. FICHTE.

That foundation which Reinhold sought thus to establish in the consciousness, Fichte, going back of that, going further than that, places in an act primitive and spontaneous, the source of consciousness itself, viz., the act by which the soul, the subject, the ego, concludes its own existence as such. This modification of the system deserves a more particular mention; but first the personal history of the man himself demands our attention.

Johann Gottlieb (or Theophilus) Fichte was born at Rammenan, May 19, 1762, of poor but respectable parents; his father a ribbon-maker, descended from a Swedish ser

geant of the army of Gustavus Adolphus, a man of strict integrity, of firm, unbending will, virtues which passed over in striking degree to the inheritance of the son. Many anecdotes are related of the childhood and youth of Gottlieb, which show that he possessed a very marked character. He was little like other children, little with them, took no pleasure in the sports of his brothers and sisters. There seems to have been in him, in very childhood, a love of solitude, a power of creative imagination, vague longings for something superior to what was about him or what was in him. By himself he wanders into the fields and among the forests, pleased with the luxury of silence and his own thoughts and the deep solitude of nature, gazes into the deep sky till the sun goes down, and late in the twilight returns sadly, thoughtfully, to his home. An anecdote which is related of him shows the self-command of the boy. A work of fiction which fell into his hands seized so strongly on his imagination that he forgot all things else, and was punished for his negligence. Deeply stung with the consciousness of his fault and his degradation, he resolved to sacrifice forever the object which had betrayed him to this offence, and taking the book, walked deliberately to a stream that ran past the house, and lingering awhile to gather strength for the sacrifice, summoning all his resolution, threw the idol at last into the stream and as he saw it floating away forever from him, burst into tears. The act had been observed, and as the boy did not explain his conduct, his motive was misunderstood, and he was again severely punished-a prelude of what oft happened to him in after life, to be misunderstood and suffer in consequence. The precocity of the child attracted the attention of the Lord of Rammenan, and of his friend the Baron von Miltitz, of Saxony on the Elbe, who took charge of his education, placing him under the care of a country pastor, where he passed some of the pleasantest years of his life. Here he remained till his thirteenth year, receiving his first instruc

tion in the ancient languages, and what was worth more to him than all languages, ancient or modern, kind and affectionate treatment. His patron now placed him at the seminary of Schulpforte. There he was harshly treated and much abused. Tyranny and force on the part of the teachers led to duplicity and cunning on the part of the pupils. The generous and virtuous elements of character were little cultivated or esteemed. The integrity and honesty and self reliance of Gottlieb were put to a severe test. His sympathies were repressed. His tears were taught to flow in secret. He resolved to fly from the gloomy monastic walls, where life was so wretched. He was already well on his way, on foot and without resources, to Hamburg, when he remembered a saying of his old pastor, that one ought never to begin an important undertaking in life without asking Divine assistance. Kneeling by the road-side, he implores the blessing of heaven on a friendless wandering boy. The thought of his mother now occurred to him; his eyes filled with tears; wandering from his school, he was in fact wandering from his friends and home, and might perhaps return no more. This thought brought back his courage and his better principle. He resolved to return and bravely meet the punishment that might await him at Schulpforte, "that he might look once more on the face of his mother." The honesty with which he confessed his fault procured his pardon, and he was thenceforth more kindly treated. How much to the future man was that one instance of self-conquest worth in after years.

At eighteen Fichte enters the university of Jena as student of theology; and here his philosophic genius seems to have been more decidedly awakened by the grand problems of liberty, necessity and Providence, which now came before him for solution. His patron's death, which occurred soon after, threw him again on his own resources, and he became private tutor in Zurich. Here he became

acquainted with Mlle. Rahn, a niece of Klopstock, his future bride. His tutorship was not altogether to his mind, nor altogether successful, and 1790 he quits Zurich to seek his fortunes in Germany. Vainly seeking employment at Stuttgart and Weimar, he comes at last to Leipsig and begins giving lessons in Greek and philosophy, and here forms his first acquaintance with the writings of Kant. It was an era in his life. "I have been living for the last four or five months," he says, "in Leipsig the happiest life I can remember. I came here with my head full of grand projects, which all burst one after another, like so many soap-bubbles without leaving me so much as the froth. At first this troubled me a little, and half in despair, I took a step which I ought to have taken long before. Since I could not alter what was without me, I resolved to try to alter what was within. I threw myself into philosophy, the Kantian, and here I found the true antidote for all my evils, and joy enough into the bargain. The influence which this philosophy, the ethical part of it particularly, has had upon my whole system of thought is not to be described." He proceeds to express his firm belief in the doctrine of free will as the only foundation for virtue and duty, and then proceeds: "I am furthermore well convinced, that this life is not the land of enjoyment, but of labor and toil--that every joy is granted to us but to strengthen us for further exertion; that the management of our own fate is by no means required of us, but only self-culture. I trouble myself, therefore, not at all concerning the things that are without; I endeavor not to appear, but to be. And to this perhaps I owe the deep tranquillity I enjoy." After various reverses and removals, Fichte visits Königsberg, attracted by his admiration for Kant. He places in the hands of that philosopher, to whom he had no introduction, a work written in eight days entitled, A Critique on all Revelation. Kant saw in the stranger his own peer, and received him cordially.