FORT L AGE. 515 Is called consciousness." The rank of a being depends on its capacity for reflection : the greater the extent of its attention and the smaller the stimuli which suffice to rouse this to action, the higher it stands. Impulse — this is the fundamental idea of Fortlage's psychology, like will with Fichte, and representation with Herbart — consists of an element of representation and an element of feeling. Pleasure + effort-image = impulse. In his metaphysical convictions, to which he gave expression in his Exposition and Criticism of the Argument, for the Existence of God, 1840, among other works, Fort- lage belongs to the philosophers of identity. Originally sailing in Hegel's wake, he soon recognizes that the roots of the theory of identity go back to the Kantio-Fichtean philosophy, with which the system of absolute truth, as he holds, has come into being. He thus becomes an adherent of the Science of Knowledge, whose deductive results he finds inductively -confirmed by psychological experience. Psy- chology is the empirical test for the metaphysical calculus of the Science of Knowledge. In regard to the absolute Fortlage is in agreement with Krause, the younger Fichte, Ulrici, etc., and calls his standpoint transcendent pantheism. According to this all that is good, exalted, and valuable in the world is divine in its nature ; the human reason is of the same essence as the divine reason (there can be nothing higher than reason) ; the Godhead is the absolute ego of Fichte, which employs the empirical egos as organs, which thinks and wills in individuals, in so far as they think the truth and will the good, but at the same time as universal subject goes beyond them. If, after the example of Hegel, Ave give up transcendent pantheism in favor of immanence, two unphilosophical modes of representing the absolute at once result — on the one hand, materialism ; on the other, popular, unphilosophical theism. If the Fichtean Science of Knowledge could be separated from its difficult method, which it is impossible ever to make comprehensible to the unphilosophical mind, it would be called to take the place of religion.*
- Among Fortlage's posthumous manuscripts was one on the Philosophy of
Religion, on which Eucken published an essay in the Zeiischrift fur Pkiloso-
