Charles Carroll Everett

“ Considering everything, Fichte must be regarded as the ideal professor. Few students have been so fortunate as those that were brought under his influence. His philosophical lectures were profound, original, and full of life. Few lectures can have put a greater strain upon the minds of the listeners than these, and few lectures so abstruse could have brought more inspiration. There was a special inspiration to the students in the thought that a new System of philosophy, or, as many of them doubtless believed, the final philosophy, was being unrolled for the first time before their eyes. ”

“ It was always the habit of Fichte to think with his pen. We have a fragment that was written in the year 1790, in which is revealed the inner crisis which his life had reached. It is entitled “Aphorisms in Regard to Religion and Deism.” [3] In it he recognizes the great chasm that exists between the elements of our nature, between the intellect and the heart. The intellect can see nothing but a necessity by which God and man are alike bound. Sin is nothing for which one can be blamed. It is nothing that admits of forgiveness. ”

“ The philosophy of Fichte is more personal than most systems. It is the expression of the life and nature of its author. At first this personal element might seem to detract from the value of the system considered in larger relations. It is obvious, however, that this will depend on the character of the personality which the system manifests. So far as the spirit of Fichte fulfils the ideal of human nature, so far will the personal element in his philosophy give to it a greater worth, if not a wider acceptance. ”

“ The consistory of Saxony refused his petition for the aid often given to theological students. He was thus thrown wholly upon himself.
Much in the youth of Fichte reminds us of that of Carlyle. Like Carlyle, he had an intense desire to influence men, with not a very distinct view of the end toward which he would lead them. Like Carlyle, he was forced by poverty to accept the position of tutor in one family and another, and, like him, he was irked by the relations into which he was brought with uncongenial persons. ”

“ I append, for convenience of reference, the leading dates in the life of Fichte:
He was born in 1762. He became a student of Kant in 1790. He entered upon his professorship at Jena in 1794, and left it in 1799. He died at Berlin, in [1814] . The period of his life in Jena is commonly reckoned as that of his earlier method in philosophy. When his whole career as a writer is considered, it is, however, divided into three periods, of which the life at Jena makes the second. ”

“ As this produced no effect, he started forth, fired by a sense of his wrongs, and also by romantic hopes suggested by the story of Robinson Crusoe, which he had been reading. He seems to have felt the attraction, which is so natural to boys, for the sea ”