42 2 FICHTE. ernment of the World."* For this it was confiscated by the Dresden government on the charge of containing atheis- tical matter, while other courts were summoned to take like action. In Weimar hopes were entertained of an amicable adjustment of the matter. But when Fichte, after publish- ing two vindications f couched in vehement language, had in a private letter uttered the threat that he would answer with his resignation any censure proceeding from the University Senate, not only was censure for indiscre- tion actually imposed, but his (threatened) resignation accepted. Going to Berlin, Fichte found a friendly government, a numerous public for his lectures, and a stimulating circle of friends in the romanticists, the brothers Schlegel, Tieck, Schleiermacher, etc. In the first years of his Berlin resi- dence there appeared The Vocatioti of Man, The Exclusive Commercial State, 1 800 ; The Sun-clear Report to the Larger Public on the Essential Nature of the New Philosophy, and the Answer to Reinhold, 1801. Three works, which were the outcome of his lectures and were published in the year 1806 {Characteristics of the Present Age, The Nature of the Scholar, Way to the Blessed Life or Doctrine of Religion), iorm a connected whole. In the summer of 1805 Fichte filled a professorship at Erlangen, and later, after the outbreak of the war, he occupied for a short time a
- It is a mistake, Fichte writes here, referring to the conclusion of Forberg's
article (" Is there a God ? It is and remains uncertain," etc.), to say that it is doubtful whether there is a God or not. That there is a moral order of the world, which assigns to each rational individual his determined place and counts on his work, is most certain, nay, it is the ground of all other certitude. The living and operative moral order (ordo ordinans) is itself God ; we need no other God, and can conceive no other. There is no ground in reason for going beyond this world-order to postulate a particular being as its cause. Who- ever ascribes personality and consciousness to this particular being makes it finite; consciousness belongs only to the individual, limited ego. And it is allowable to state this frankly and to beat down the prattle of the schools, in order that the true religion of joyous well-doing may lift up its head.
Appeal to the Public, and Formal Defense against the Charge of Atheism,
1799. The first of these maintains that Fichte's standpoint and that of his opponents are related as duty and advantage, sensible and suprasensible, and that'the substantial God of his accusers, to be derived from the sensibility, is, as personified fate, as the distributer of all happiness and unhappiness to finite beings, a miserable fetich.
