William Torrey Harris

“ Fichte's system of philosophy sets out from the category of quality and proceeds towards the category of freedom, demonstrating at every step that self-activity is the foundation of the qualitative and showing how the qualitative comes to arise from the self-active. Being or existence is not a sort of quiescent substrate underlying all manner of activity, but the very substance of being itself is pure activity. ”

“ To the English nation belongs the great honour of having invented local self-government and the complete co-ordination of the three departments of government the executive, the judiciary, and the legislative. ”

“ The Science of Knowledge having been established as the science of all sciences, Fichte, soon after its discovery and publication, deemed it advisable to illustrate by an example in what manner other sciences take their starting point from it, and apply the form which it prescribes for all sciences. ”

“ The reflections of a Kant, a Fichte, or a Hegel will doubtless provoke dissent in the reader's mind. But they will already have served a good purpose when they have been the occasion for so much study as dissent implies. There is one thing that their study will surely produce. This is the conviction that the progress of the world moves from the consolidation of the three powers of government in one person to the co-ordination of those powers in separate departments ”

“ These categories can have no significance in regard to inanimate things and none in regard to living beings which have not developed self-activity to the point of freedom and responsibility.
The realm of art and literature is governed by the category of the beautiful, another sub-category of freedom. For the beautiful is the manifestation of free personality, and the epochs of art take rank in accordance with the adequacy of their manifestation of this attribute. Homer taught the world how to recognize freedom under all phases of nature ”

“ It indicates a view of nature that refuses to see mechanical forces, but insists that all movement is free and personal. Modern poetry still imitates Homer, and modern art ornaments all things by decking them out with shapes that seem to realize inward purposes. Thus the real intention (of usefulness for man) is concealed by the appearance of freedom. ”

“ In the present active state of the public mind on questions of the ownership of property and the socialistic reorganization of society, it is necessary to appeal to reason rather than to tradition, and show the rationale of the institutions that have come down to us from our forefathers. ”