424 FICHTE. Science of Knowledge, 1798, and next to these the Lectures on the Theory 0/ the State, 1820 (delivered in 181 3).* I. The Science of Knowledge. (a) The Problem. — In Fichte's judgment Kant did not suc- ceed in carrying through the transformation in thought which it was his aim to effect, because the age did not under- stand the spirit of his philosophy. This spirit, and with it the great service of Kant, consists in transc endental ide alism, which by the doctrine that objects conform themselves to representations, not representations to objects, draws phil- osophy away from external objects and leads it back into ourselves. We have followed the letter, he thinks, instead of the spirit of Kant, and because of a few passages with a dogmatic ring, whose references to a given matter, the thing in itself, and the like, were intended only as preliminary, have overlooked the numberless others in which the con- trary is distinctly maintained. Thus the interpreters of Kant, using their own prejudices as a criterion, have read into him exactly that which he sought to refute, and have made the destroyer of all dogmatism himself a dogmatist ; thus in the Kantianism of the Kantians there has sprung up a marvelous combination of crude dogmatism and un- compromising idealism. Though such an absurd mingling of entirely heterogeneous elements may be excused in the case of interpreters and successors, who have had to con- struct for themselves the guiding principle of the whole from their study of the critical writings, yet we cannot
- At the same time as J. H. Lowe's book Die Philosophie Fie hies, 1862, there
appeared in celebration of the centenary of Fichte's birthyear, or birthday, a large number of minor essays and addresses by Friedrich Harms, A. L. Kym, Trendelenburg, Franz Hoffman, Karl Heyder, F. C. Lott, Karl Kostlin, J. B. Meyer, and others (of . Reichlin-Meldegg in vol. xlii. of tht Zeitschrift fiir Phi- losophic). Lasson has written, 1863, on Fichte's relation to Church and state, Zeller on Fichte as a political thinker {Vortrdge und Abhandhmgen, 1865), and F. Zimmer on his philosophy of religion. Among foreign works we may note Adamson's Fichte, 1881, and the English translations of several of Fichte's works by Kroeger ^Science of Knowledge, 1868 ; Science of Rights, i86g — both also, 1889] and William Smith {^Popular Writings, 4th ed., 1889 ; also Everett's Fichte s Science of Knowledge (Griggs's Philosophical Classics, 1884), and sev- eral translations in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, including one o5 The Facts of Consciousness, — Tr.]
