"
Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre, or Lore of Ultimate Science, was to add
the key-stone of the arch: and by commencing with an act, instead of a
thing or substance, Fichte assuredly gave the first mortal blow to
Spinozism, as taught by Spinoza himself; and supplied the idea of a
system truly metaphysical, and of a metaphysique truly systematic:
(i.e. having its spring and principle within itself). But this
fundamental idea he overbuilt with a heavy mass of mere notions, and
psychological acts of arbitrary reflection. Thus his theory
degenerated into a crude [30] egoismus, a boastful and hyperstoic
hostility to Nature, as lifeless, godless, and altogether unholy:
while his religion consisted in the assumption of a mere Ordo
ordinans, which we were permitted exoterice to call GOD; and his
ethics in an ascetic, and almost monkish, mortification of the natural
passions and desires. In Schelling's Natur-Philosophie, and the System
des transcendentalen Idealismus, I first found a genial coincidence
with much that I had toiled out for myself, and a powerful assistance
in what I had yet to do.
I have introduced this statement, as appropriate to the narrative
nature of this sketch; yet rather in reference to the work which I
have announced in a preceding page, than to my present subject.
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