Charles Carroll Everett

“ We possess intelligence, existing under the form of consciousness. If our higher life exhausted, at any one moment, the life of God, it would be as true to say that he possesses consciousness, as that he is intelligence. The fact that pure intelligence, and not consciousness, is ascribed to him, shows that there is a divine reality above and beyond our little existences. The thought of Fichte is thus seen not to be, as yet, fully stated. ”

“ It is, however, only the extreme application of the same principle that has been accepted by Fichte, as it was accepted by Kant, as the solvent of all ultimate difficulties. It is the principle of the Postulate. The practical aspect of life is seen to be so imperative that we postulate whatever is needed for its realization. This principle is here carried so far that the absoluteness of this practical element of life is itself postulated. It is felt that no other view of life would be worthy of the grandeur which, we feel, must belong to it. ”

“ We have had no hint of any reason why we should recognize other individuals, or of the relation in which we might stand to them. The world of men would seem to be, like the world of things, the creation of the productive imagination. At the same time, Fichte speaks, as a matter of course, of other individuals, [2] thus showing that he recognized this world of men, of which his system itself would tell us nothing. ”

“ The infinite I is the goal of my being, a goal that it can never reach; it is in no sense the source of my being. Holding fast to this principle, we find a meaning in the passage: “The goal of my activity is, by the moral law, placed outside of me. I am to live not for myself, but for others.” We now understand why, for each, the manifestation of this pure reason, or this pure I, is found in all men but himself. Duty requires that he should forget himself. We can now understand, also, the difference between this statement and the earlier. ”

“ There are but two elements of our inner life; namely, consciousness and will. This being so, there remains as the object of consciousness only the will. The I, then, is intellectual; the Me represents the act of willing. Although we recognize the I and the Me as one, we cannot unite them in a single thought. Each is precisely what the other is not. They are antithetical, and we cannot reconcile them so that they shall become one. The real self is an X. [7] It is the unknown and unthinkable somewhat that manifests itself in both the theoretical and practical reason, in the I and the Me. ”

“ Poor, perhaps well meaning, but blind babbler, all the pleasantness that is scattered through your sensuous existence is not there that you may brood piously over it; but that your strength may be increased, animated, exalted, in order that you may joyfully perform the work of God on earth. ”

“ By the moral ordering of the universe, Fichte means the fact that morality constitutes the essence of the universe. He means that the moral impulse forms the very substance of our own nature, and that it shapes for us the external world; that all without us is the postulate of duty, and that all within us is the impulse of duty. That power which works in all toward the accomplishment of the highest demand of duty is what ho here calls God. God is the power in us that makes for righteousness. ”

“ Each thing is taken by itself, and finds its relation to the universe to consist in some special aptitude to meet some special need. There is no sweep of one grand movement of deduction in which each has its place, no organic unity resting upon some universal principle. Such simplicity and organic unity is the aim of the system of Hegel. In comparison with this, the method of Fichte seemed to consist in the use of one makeshift after another. ”

“ If, on the other hand, the world is, as the idealist believes, not an external, solid fact, but the product of the imagination, then there is left no place for reasoning, based on the idea of its creation. ”

“ The utterance is an exaltation of the individual man. It concludes, however, with the statement that all individuals are included in the one great unity of the pure spirit. In a note, he guards against confounding this view with that of Spinoza. The unity of the pure spirit, he says, is, with him, an unattainable ideal. In the passage from the System of Ethics to which reference has already been made, some light is thrown upon the expression, Unity of the Spirit. The unity of the spirit will be reached when all individuals are lost in God ”

“ Other forms of argument for the divine existence fare no better at his hands. He urges that, if the world is a real and solid fact, it is, once for all, what it is, and needs no explanation, and admits of none. ”

“ Materially speaking, if we may express the incomprehensible in such manner as is possible to us, the divinity must be affirmed to be pure consciousness. It is intelligence, pure intelligence, spiritual life and activity. [24] We have here a thought like that of the Hindu philosophers of the Upanishads and the Vedanta. According to these philosophers, God is the pure intelligence, but, being infinite, has not consciousness, for there is no consciousness without duality. In Fichte’s phrase, with which we are already familiar, there can be no knowledge of the Me, without that of the Not-me ”

“ This basis is that impulse to activity which has before been identified with the moral law. We assume the existence of a world of persons and things outside of us in order that the impulse of duty may be fulfilled. Duty is thus the one reality upon which all else depends. ”

“ That mighty impulse by which all are borne on toward this common end is the power and the presence of God. He constitutes the whole of this mighty movement, as we constitute, each in his place, a part of it. ”

“ Religion that contains anything foreign to this element of duty is superstition. Fichte makes light of the common arguments for the divine existence. He mocks at those who base their faith upon the fact that the world ministers to the happiness of man. ”

“ Thus we must assume rational beings as existing around us. Again, in order to act upon the outer world, we must have an instrument that is identified in a special manner with ourselves. We thus postulate an articulated body. ”