From Central European Intellectual Life

GA 65 — 16 December 1915, Berlin

5. Fichte's Spirit Among Us

We are transported to Rammenau in Upper Lusatia, a place near Kamenz where Lessing was born. 1769, to be precise. A relatively small house stands by a stream. It is known that the ribbon weaving trade has been hereditary in the family since the time of the Thirty Years' War. The house was not exactly prosperous, but rather quite poor. A stream flows past the little house, and by the stream stands a seven-year-old boy, relatively small, rather stocky for his age, with rosy cheeks and lively eyes that are currently filled with deep sorrow. The boy has just thrown a book into the stream. The book floats away. The father comes out of the house and says something like the following to the boy: Gottlieb, what were you thinking of! You throw into the water something your father bought at great expense to give you great joy! The father was very angry because he had given the book to Gottlieb the other day as a gift, to the boy who until then had learned nothing from books except what one can learn from the Bible and the hymnbook.

What had actually happened? Young Gottlieb had absorbed what he had been given from the Bible and the hymnal with great inner strength, and he was a boy who had studied well at school. His father wanted to give him a treat and one day bought him 'Siegfried and the Horned One' as a present. The boy Gottlieb immersed himself completely in reading 'Siegfried and the Horned One', and as a result he was scolded for his forgetfulness and inattention with regard to everything he had been interested in before, with regard to his schoolwork. This upset the boy. He had grown so fond of his new book, 'Siegfried of the Horns', and took such a deep interest in it. But on the other hand, the thought was vividly present in his mind: 'You have neglected your duty!' Such were the thoughts of the seven-year-old boy. So he went to the stream and threw the book into the water without further ado. He received his punishment because he was able to tell his father the facts and what he had done, but not the real reason for it.

We follow the boy Gottlieb in this age into other life situations. We see him, for example, far from his parents' house, standing outside on a lonely pasture, from four o'clock in the afternoon, gazing into the distance, completely absorbed in the view of the distance that was spread around him. He is still standing there at five, still standing there at six, still standing there when the bells ring for prayer. And the shepherd comes and sees the boy standing there. He pokes him and makes him aware that he should go home with him.

Two years after the event we have just assumed, in 1771, Baron von Miltitz is staying with the landowner in Rammenau. He wanted to come there from his own estate in Oberau on a Sunday to have lunch and to socialize with his neighbors. He also wanted to hear the sermon beforehand. But he arrived too late and was unable to hear the Rammenau preacher, whom he knew to be a decent man. The sermon was already over. He was very sorry about that, and his regret was discussed many times among the guests, the innkeeper and the others gathered. Then they said: Yes, but there is a boy in the village who can perhaps repeat the sermon; they know about this boy. And now nine-year-old Gottlieb was fetched. He came in his blue peasant's smock, they asked him a few questions, and he answered them briefly with yes and no. He felt very little at home in the distinguished company. Then someone suggested that he repeat the sermon he had just heard. He gathered himself together and, with deep inward inspiration and the most heartfelt participation in every word, he repeated the sermon he had heard from beginning to end to his landlord's estate neighbor. And he repeated it so that one had the feeling that everything he said came directly from his own heart; he had absorbed it so completely that it was all his own. With inner fire and warmth, growing ever more fiery and warm, nine-year-old Gottlieb presented the entire sermon.

This nine-year-old Gottlieb was the son of Christian Fichte, the ribbon weaver. The lord of the manor of Miltitz was amazed at what he had experienced in this way, and said that he must ensure the further development of this boy. And the acceptance of such a concern had to be something extraordinarily welcome to the parents because of their meager external circumstances, although they loved their boy dearly. For Gottlieb had many brothers and sisters, and the family had grown quite large. The baron's offer of help was most welcome. The baron was so touched by Gottlieb's story that he wanted to take the nine-year-old boy with him immediately. He took Gottlieb to Oberau near Meissen. But young Gottlieb did not feel at home there at all, in the big house that was so different from what he had been used to in his poor ribbon weaver's cottage. In all the grandeur, he felt utterly unhappy. So he was given to a pastor named Leberecht Krebel in nearby Niederau. And there Gottlieb grew up in a loving environment, with the excellent pastor Leberecht Krebel. He immersed himself in everything that shimmered through the conversations that the brave pastor had with the exceptionally talented boy. And when Gottlieb was thirteen years old, he was accepted at Schulpforta with the support of his benefactor.

Now he was plunged into the strict discipline of Schulpforta. This discipline did not particularly appeal to him. He realized that the way the pupils lived together made it necessary to practice some secrecy and some cunning in their behavior toward the teachers and educators. He was completely dissatisfied with the way older boys were placed there as “senior companions,” as they were called, for the younger boys. Even at that time, Gottlieb had absorbed “Robinson” and many other stories. At first, school life had become unbearable for him. He could not reconcile it with his heart that somewhere where one should grow towards the spiritual world, he felt, there was concealment, cunning, deception. What to do? Well, he decided to go out into the wide world. He set out and just went through. On his way, the thought comes to him, deeply carried by feeling: Have you done right? Are you allowed to do this? Where does he go for advice? He falls to his knees, says a pious prayer and waits until some inner hint is given to him from the spiritual worlds as to what he should do. The inner hint was that he turned back. He turned back voluntarily. It was a great stroke of luck that there was an extraordinarily loving headmaster there, Rector Geisler, who let the young Gottlieb tell him the whole story and who had a deep inner sympathy for Gottlieb; who did not punish him, who even put him in a position that young Gottlieb could now be much more satisfied with himself and his surroundings than he could actually only wish for. And so he was also able to join the most talented teachers.

His aspirations were not easily satisfied. The young Gottlieb, who already longed for the highest at this age, was not actually allowed to read what he had previously heard about by hearsay: Goethe, Wieland, but especially Lessing, were at that time forbidden reading in Schulpforta. But there was a teacher who was able to give him a remarkable reading: Lessing's “Anti-Goeze”, that pamphlet against Goeze, which is supported by inner strength and contains everything that Lessing had to offer as his creed in a high, but free-minded way of thinking, in a free and frank language.

Thus Gottlieb absorbed at a relatively young age what he could from this “Anti-Goeze”. Not only did he appropriate the ideas – that would have been the very least for him – the young Gottlieb also adopted the style, the way of relating to the highest things, the way of finding one's way into a worldview.

And so he grew up in Schulpforta. When he had to write his final examination paper, he chose a literary topic. A strange final paper. It lacked what many young people do: they intersperse their schoolwork with all sorts of philosophical ideas. Nothing of philosophy, nothing of philosophical ideas and concepts was found in this final paper. On the other hand, it was already evident in it that the young man set out to observe people, to look at them into their innermost hearts, and strove for knowledge of human nature. This was particularly evident in this school assignment.

Now, in the meantime, the charitable Baron von Miltitz had died. The generous support that had been offered to the young Gottlieb, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, dried up. Fichte took his school-leaving examination at Schulpforta, went to Jena and had to live there in deepest poverty. He could not participate in any of the student life that was then in Jena. He had to work hard from day to day to earn what he needed for bare survival. And he could only devote a few hours to nourishing his deeply aspiring mind. Jena proved to be too small. Johann Gottlieb Fichte could not support himself there. He thought he would fare better in Leipzig, a larger city. There he tried to prepare for the position that was the ideal of his father and mother, who were devout people: a Saxon parish, a preaching position. He had, I might say, shown himself to be predestined for such a preaching post. He could become so absorbed in the traditions of Scripture that he was repeatedly asked to give short reflections on this or that Bible passage, even in his father's house. He was also asked to do this when he was with the brave pastor Leberecht Krebel. And whenever he was able to spend a short time at home, in the place where his parents' modest house stood, he was allowed to preach there, because the local pastor liked him. And he preached in such a way that what he was able to say was the biblical word in an independent but thoroughly biblical way, as if carried by a holy enthusiasm.

So he wanted to prepare for his rural theological profession in Leipzig. But it was difficult. It was difficult for him to get a teaching position that he thought he could fill. He worked as a tutor and a private teacher. But this life became hard for him. And above all, he was unable to really advance spiritually during this life. He was already twenty-six years old. It was a hard time for him. One day he had nothing left and no prospect of getting anything in the next few days; no prospect that, if things went on like this, he would ever be able to achieve even the most modest profession he had set his mind to. He could only be supported by his parents in the most frugal way; as I said before, it was a family blessed with many children.

Then one day he stood before the abyss, and the question arose like a wild temptation before his soul: No prospect for this life? — He might not have fully realized it, but in the depths of his consciousness, self-chosen death lurked. Then the poet Weisse, who had become a friend of his, came at the right time. He offered him a position as a private tutor in Zurich and made sure that he could actually take up this position in three months. And so, from the fall of 1788, we find our Johann Gottlieb Fichte in Zurich. Let us try to follow him with the gaze of the soul, as he stands in the pulpit of Zurich Cathedral, now completely filled with his own understanding of the Gospel of John, already completely filled with the endeavor to express in his own way that which is expressed in the Bible. So that when one heard his inspiring words resound in the Zurich cathedral, one could believe that someone had stood up who was able to pour the Bible into a completely new word in a completely new way, as if through a new inspiration. Many who heard him in the Zurich cathedral at the time certainly had this impression.

And then we follow him into another phase of his life. He became a tutor in the Ott household, at the “Zum Schwert” inn in Zurich. He only to a small extent submitted to the peculiar prejudiced view that was held of him there. He got on well with his pupils, less well with their parents. And we sense what Fichte is from the following. One day, the mother of the pupils received a strange letter from the tutor. What did this letter say? It said, roughly, that education was a task to which he – he meant himself, Johann Gottlieb Fichte – would gladly submit. And what he knew about the pupils and had learned from them gave him the certainty that he could do a great deal with them. But the education must be taken up at a certain point; above all, the mother must be educated. For a mother who behaves like that towards her child is the greatest obstacle to education in the home. I need not describe the strange feelings with which Frau Ott in Zurich read this document. But the matter was once again postponed. Johann Gottlieb Fichte was able to work in a blessed way in the Ott house in Zurich until the spring of 1790, so for more than a year and a half.

But Fichte was not at all suited to confine what his soul embraced to his profession. He was not at all suited to turn his gaze away from what was going on in the intellectual culture around him. He grew into what was going on spiritually around him through the inner zeal and the inner interest he took in everything that was going on in the world around him. Yes, he grew into all of it. In Switzerland, he grew into the thoughts that filled the minds of all people at the time, thoughts that were passed on from the erupting French Revolution. I would like to say that we can eavesdrop on him as he discusses with a particularly talented person in Olten the questions that were occupying France and the world in such a significantly intervening way at the time; how he found that these were the ideas should now be pursued; how he incorporated everything that occupied him internally, arising from his deep religiosity and keen intellect, into the ideas of human happiness, into the ideas of human rights, of lofty human ideals.

Fichte was not a solitary being who could only develop his soul rigidly out of his inner self. This soul grew together with the outside world. This soul felt, as if unconsciously, the duty of a human being not only to be for himself, but to stand as an expression of what the world wants in the time in which one lives. That was a deepest feeling, a deepest sentiment in Fichte. And so it was that at the very time when he was, one might say, most receptive to the growing together of his soul with what lived and breathed in his spiritual environment, he grew together with the Swiss element, and from this Swiss-German element we always find an influence in the whole of Fichte, as he later works and lives.

One must have an understanding of the profound difference between what lives in Switzerland and what, I would say, lives a little to the north in Germany if one wants to grasp the impression that Fichte's Swiss environment, Swiss humanity and human striving made on him. It differs, for example, essentially from other Germanic peoples in that it imbues everything that is spiritual life with a certain self-confident element, so that the whole cultural element takes on a political expression; that everything is thought in such a way that the person feels placed through the thought into direct action in the world. Art, science, literature, they stand as individual tributaries of the whole of life for this Swiss Germanic spirit.

This was what could also combine with Fichte's soul element in the most beautiful way. He was also a person who could not think any human activity or any human aspiration individually. Everything had to be integrated into the totality of human activity and human thought and human feeling and the whole human world view. In Fichte's work, what he could achieve was directly connected with his increasingly strong and powerful personality. Anyone who reads Fichte today, who engages with his writings, which often appear so dry in content, with the sparkling spirit of individual treatises, individual writings, will have no idea of what Fichte must have been like when he put all his inner fire, his inner presence in what he meant spiritually and what he had spiritually penetrated, into speech. Because what he was flowed into his speech. That is why he tried – it was a failed attempt – to found a school of rhetoric even back then in Zurich. For he believed that by the way the spiritual can be brought to people, one can indeed work in a completely different way than just through the content, however solid it may be.

Fichte also found a stimulating and soul-stirring relationship in Zurich, in the house of Rahn, a wealthy Swiss at the time, who was Klopstock's brother-in-law. And Fichte developed a deep affection for the daughter, Johanna Rahn. He was connected with Klopstock's niece by a close friendship that developed more and more into love. At first, the position as a private tutor in Zurich was no longer tenable. Fichte had to look further. He did not want to somehow become a member of the Rahn family and live off the Rahn family's funds, even though he was now, before he had made a name for himself in the world (he often spoke of this at the time). He wanted to continue to seek his path in the world; we must not say “his luck” when it comes to him, but rather “seeking his path in the world”.

He went back to Germany, to Leipzig. He thought he would stay there for a while; he hoped to find there what could be his real profession, to find that form of spiritual expression that he wanted to make his way in life. Then he wanted to return after some time to freely elaborate what he had united with his soul. Then something unexpected happened that changed all his plans for life. Rahn collapsed and lost all his wealth. Not only was he now tormented by the worry that the people he loved most had fallen into poverty, but he now had to take up his wanderer's staff and move on into the world, had to give up his favorite plans that had opened up to him from the depths of his soul.

Initially, a position as a private tutor in Warsaw presented itself to him. However, as soon as he arrived there and introduced himself, the aristocratess in whose house he was to enter found that the movements of Fichte, which were already then and later firmly and energetically found by some, were actually clumsy; that he had no talent at all for finding his way into any society. They let him know that. He could not bear that. So he left.

His path now led him to the place where he could first believe that he would find a person whom he held in the highest esteem among all the people not only of his own time but of the entire age, and whom he had approached after having been completely absorbed in the world view of Spinoza for a while ; a man whom he had approached by studying his writings, in which he had completely, completely found his way, so that, as the Bible or other writings had once stood before him, so now, in a very special new form, the writings of this man stood before him – namely Immanuel Kant. He made his way to Königsberg. And he sat at the feet of the great teacher and found himself completely absorbed in the way his soul could reflect what he considered to be the greatest teaching ever given to mankind. And in Fichte's soul, what lived in his soul out of his pious mind, out of his musings on the divine governance of the world and on the way in which the secrets of this governance have always been revealed to humanity, to the world, united with what he had learned and heard from Kant. And he developed the thoughts that arose in his soul into a work to which he gave the title “Critique of All Revelation”. Fichte was born in 1762, and was thirty years old when he wrote it. A strange thing happened at that time. Kant immediately recommended a publisher for the work that had so captivated him: “Critique of All Revelation.” The work went out into the world without the name of the author. No one thought it was anything but a work by Immanuel Kant himself. The good reviews flew in from all sides. This was unbearable for Fichte, who in the meantime, again through the mediation of Kant, had been offered a position as a private tutor in the excellent Krockow household, near Danzig, which he now found very appealing, where he could also freely pursue his intellectual endeavors. It was unbearable for him to appear before the world in such a way that when people spoke of his work, they actually meant someone else's. The first edition, soon out of print, was followed by a second, in which he named himself. Now, however, he had a strange experience. Now, to say almost the opposite of what one had said earlier was not possible, at least for a large number of critics; but one toned down the judgment one had had earlier. It was another piece of human knowledge that Fichte had acquired.

After he had spent some time in the Krockow house, he was able to make the plan, in the way he was now placed in the world, not outwardly, but spiritually - he had shown that he was capable of something - to go back to the Rahn house; only in this way he wanted to win Klopstock's niece for himself, now he could do it. And so he went back to Zurich again in 1793. Klopstock's niece became his wife.

Not only did he now continue to work in the deepest sense on what he had absorbed as Kantian ideas, but he also delved further into all that had already occupied him during his first stay in Zurich; he delved into the ideas of human goals and human ideals that were now going around the world. And he wove together the way he himself had to think about human endeavor and human ideals with what was now going through the world. And he was such an independent nature that he could not help but tell the world what he had to think about what the most radical natures were now thinking about human progress. “Contributions to the Correction of the Public's Judgments of the French Revolution” was the book that appeared in 1793.

At the same time as he was working on this book, he was constantly working on the ideas of the world view that he had gained from the Kantian world view. There must be a Weltanschhauung, he said to himself, which, starting from a supreme impulse for human knowledge, could illuminate all knowledge. And this Weltanschhauung, which asks about the highest in such a way that one could never find a higher for knowledge, that was Fichte's ideal.

In a strange way, the circumstances are linked. While he was still busy with the inner elaboration of his ideas, he received a letter from Jena, from Jena-Weimar. Such an impression had been made there by what Fichte had achieved that, when Karl Leonhard Reinhold left the University of Jena, Fichte was invited to take up the professorship of philosophy on the basis of what he had achieved. Those who were involved in the intellectual life of the University of Jena at the time greeted the idea of bringing this spirit, who on the one hand seemed to them to be a sparkling mind, but on the other hand, especially in matters of world view, to be striving for the highest, with the greatest satisfaction.

And now let us try to visualize him as the administrator of the teaching position that has been taken up. What had emerged as his Weltanschauung he wanted to convey to those who were now his pupils, starting from the year 1794. But Fichte was not a teacher like others. Let us first look at what had emerged in his soul. It is not possible to express this directly in his words – that would take too long – but it can be characterized entirely from his spirit. He was searching for a supreme being, one with whom the human spirit could grasp the stream of the world, the secret of the world, at one point, where the spirit was directly one with this stream of the world, with this secret of the world. So that man, by looking into this secret of the world, could connect his own existence with this secret, could thus know it. This could not be found in any external sensual existence. No eye, no ear, no other sense, no ordinary human mind could find it. For everything that can be seen with the senses externally must first be combined by the human mind; it has its being in the external world; one can only call it being if one's being is, so to speak, confirmed by what one observes with one's senses. That is not true being. At least, we cannot form any judgment at all about the true being of that which presents itself only to the senses. The source of all knowledge must arise from the innermost part of the I itself. But this cannot be a finished being, for a finished being within would be the same as that which is given to the outer senses as a finished being. It must be a creating being. That is the I itself, the I that creates itself anew every moment; the I that is not based on a finished existence but on an inner activity; the I that cannot be deprived of existence because its existence consists in its creating, in its self-creating. And into this self-creating flows everything that has true existence. So out of all sensory existence with this ego, and into the spheres where spirit surges and weaves, where spirit works as creativity! To grasp this spiritual life and activity where the ego is united with the spiritual activity and weaving of the world; to interpenetrate with that which is not external, finished existence, but what the ego creates out of the source of the divine life of the world, first as ego, and then as that which is the ideals of humanity, what the great ideas of duty are.

This was how Kantian philosophy had become embedded in Fichte's soul. And so he did not want to present his listeners with a finished doctrine; that was not what mattered to him. Fichte's lectures were not like any other lecture; his teachings were not like any other teaching. No, when this man stood at his lectern, what he had to say there, or rather, what he had to do there, was the result of long hours of meditation, during which he felt that he was inwardly immersed in the divine being, in the divine spiritual weaving and working that permeates and flows through the world, in a state that was elevated above all sensual being. After long inner communion with himself, in which he had communed with the world-spirit of the soul concerning the secrets of the world, he went forth to his listeners. But it was not his intention to impart what he had to impart, but to spread a common atmosphere from himself over his listeners. What mattered to him was that what had come to life in his soul through the secrets of the world should also come to life directly in the souls of his listeners. He wanted to awaken spiritual life, awaken spiritual being. He wanted to draw out of the souls of his listeners self-creative spiritual activity by making them cling to his words. He did not merely impart. What he wanted to give his listeners was something like the following. One day, when he wanted to illustrate this self-creative aspect of the ego — how all thinking activity can become in the ego and how man cannot come to a real understanding of the secrets of the world other than by grasping this self-creative aspect in the ego — as he was grasping the spiritual world with his listeners, as it were leading each spiritual hand into the spiritual world, 'wanted to achieve this, he said, for example: “Imagine a wall, my listeners!” Now, I hope you have now thought of a wall. The wall is now as a thought, as an idea in your soul. Now imagine the one who thinks the wall. Completely abandon all thought of the wall. Think only of the one who is thinking the wall!

Some listeners became restless, but at the same time, in the deepest part of their being, they were seized by the direct way, by the direct relationship in which Fichte wanted to place himself in relation to his listeners. The spirit from Fichte's soul was to grasp the spirit in his listeners.

And so the man worked for years, never giving the same lecture twice, always creating and reshaping it anew. For that was not what mattered to him, to communicate this or that in sentences, but to always awaken something new in his listeners. And he repeated again and again: “What matters is not that what I say or what I have to say should be repeated by this or that person, but that I should succeed in kindling in souls such flames which will become the cause for each person to become a self-thinker; that no one says what I have to say, but that each person is inspired by me to say what he himself has to say. Fichte did not want to educate students, but to educate self-thinkers. If we follow the history of Fichte's influence, we can understand that this most German of German philosophers did not actually educate any students of philosophy; he did not found a school of philosophy. Energetic men emerged everywhere from this direct relationship that he established with his students.

Now, Fichte was aware – and indeed had to be aware, since he wanted to lead the consciousness of man to the point of directly grasping the creative spiritual reality – that he had to speak in a very special way. Fichte's whole manner was difficult to grasp. Basically, all those who somehow participated in his way of teaching had not yet heard anything like what he practiced in Jena at the time. Even Schiller was astonished at this, and to Schiller he once spoke about the way in which he actually imagined his work in his own consciousness, for example as follows: When people read what I say, they cannot possibly understand what I actually want to say the way they read today. He then took one of his books and tried to read aloud what he thought was necessary to express what he wanted to say. He then said to Schiller: “You see, people today cannot recite inwardly. But because what is contained in my periods can only be brought out through true inward recitation, it just does not come out.

Of course, Fichte brought out something quite different from his own periods. What he spoke was spoken language. Therefore, even today, Fichte should be sought in the center of all the soul life to which one can devote oneself as the soul life of the whole German people; even today one should still have the effort to take in, with inner declamation, with inner listening, what otherwise seems so dry and so sober in Fichte.

Thus, as we let Fichte's intellectual development pass before our soul, we stand, as it were, on one of the intellectual summits of his being. And our gaze may well wander back to this remarkable intellectual journey.

We have visited Johann Gottlieb Fichte as he stood before Baron von Miltitz in his blue peasant's smock, a true red-cheeked, stocky peasant child, with no education other than a peasant child could have, but such that this education was already the innermost property of the soul in the nine-year-old. We have here an example of how a soul grows out of the German people, entirely out of the German people, which at first receives nothing but what lives within this German people, lives in the direct way of life of this people. We follow this soul through difficult circumstances, this soul, which is actually regarded as an ideal in the people, but must remain in the people, but must be left to the innermost impulse, the innermost drive of its being. We follow this soul as it rises to the highest heights of human inner activity, work, as it becomes a human shaper in the way we have just been allowed to describe it. We follow the path that a German soul can take, which grows directly out of the people and rises to the highest heights of spiritual being only through its own strength.

Fichte continued his teaching post in Jena until the spring of 1799. There had been all sorts of disagreements before then. For Fichte was certainly not a person who was easy to get along with, a person who would be inclined to make all sorts of detours in life and to make all sorts of soft gestures in his behavior towards people in order to make it easy to get along with him. But one important thing emerges that is significant for German life at that time.

The one person who was particularly pleased – and who agreed with Goethe on this point – was Karl August, who was able to appoint Fichte to his university in Jena. And I believe one can safely say, as an example of Karl August's complete lack of prejudice, that he appointed to his university the man who had applied Kantian philosophy to revelation in the freest way possible, but not only that – he appointed to his university the man who had advocated the freest humanistic goals in the freest, most unreserved way. I believe that one would not do justice to Karl August, this great mind, if one did not point out the high degree of lack of prejudice that this German prince needed at the time to appoint Fichte. A daring act, Goethe called this call. But I would like to say that Karl August and Goethe, who above all were and had to be the soul of this call, took it upon themselves to bring Fichte to Jena against a world of prejudice. I say it would almost be a wrong not to draw attention to the degree to which Karl August's lack of prejudice had developed. And for this purpose, I would like to read a sentence from Fichte's book, which is entitled “Contributions to the Correction of the Opinions of the Public on the French Revolution”: “They” – he means the princes of Europe, including the princes of Germany – “who are mostly educated in inertia and ignorance , or if they know anything, they know a truth expressly fabricated for them; they, who are known not to work on their education once they come to rule, who read no new writing except perhaps some watery sophistries, and who are always, at least during their years of rule, behind their age... .” That was in the last book that Fichte had written – and Karl August summoned this man to his university.

If you delve a little into the whole situation in which Fichte and those who appointed him found themselves, you come to the conclusion that the people who were of the mindset of the great, liberal-minded Karl August and Goethe actually waged a campaign against those who were in their immediate environment and who agreed with the appointment of Fichte as little as possible. And it was a campaign that was not at all easy to undertake, because, as I said, making a scene in the sense that one likes to make a scene in the world was not possible with Fichte. Fichte was a person who, through his crookedness, through his brusqueness, hurt everyone whom one would actually like to not hurt. Fichte was not a person who made a soft movement with his hand. Fichte was a person who, when something was not right for him, made his thrusts into the world with his fist. The way in which Fichte, with his full strength at the time, put what he had to tell the world into the world was not easy for Goethe and Karl August; it was very difficult for them, they groaned a little under it.

And so little by little the thunderstorms drew up. Fichte, for example, wanted to give lectures on morality, lectures that were printed as “Lectures on Morality for Scholars.” He found no hour but Sunday. But that was terrible for all those who believed that Sunday would be desecrated if one were to speak about morality in Fichte's sense to students in Jena on Sunday. And all manner of complaints were made to the Weimar government, to Goethe, but also to Karl August. The entire Jena Senate of Professors expressed the opinion that it caused an enormous stir and discord when Fichte held moral lectures at the university on Sundays – and he had in any case chosen the hour when the afternoon service was held. Karl August had to give way to Fichte's opponents in this matter, too, I would say first. But it would not be good if it were not made clear today how he had done it. Karl August wrote to the University of Jena at the time:

“We have therefore resolved, at your request, that the aforementioned Professor Fichte should only be allowed to continue his moral lectures on Sundays, in the hours after the end of the afternoon service, as a last resort.” The decree explicitly referred to the fact that “something as unusual as giving lectures on Sundays during the hours set aside for public worship” had occurred. But in issuing this decree, Karl August could not avoid adding the words: “We have gladly satisfied ourselves that if Fichte's moral lectures are similar to the excellent essay attached to this, they can be of excellent use.” But it continued to bother people. One could say that the opponents did not let up. And so it came about in 1799 that there was that unfortunate atheism dispute, as a result of which Fichte had to resign his teaching position in Jena. Forberg, a younger man, had written an essay in the journal that Fichte published at the time, which had been accused of atheism from a certain point of view. Fichte thought that the young man had been imprudent in what he had written, and he wanted to make a few marginal notes on it. But Forberg did not agree with this. And Fichte, in his free manner, which he not only used in the big things but in the smallest details, did not want to reject the essay just because he did not agree with it. He also did not want to make marginal notes against the will of the author. But he sent ahead an essay of his own, “On the Basis of Our Belief in a Divine World Government.” It contained words that were steeped in true, sincere worship of God and piety, words that may be said to have been elevated to the most spiritual level, but elevated to the most spiritual level, to that spiritual, of which Fichte wanted to say that it is the only real thing; that one can grasp reality only if one feels oneself with one's ego moving in the spiritual, standing in the spiritual current of the world. One must then grasp the existence of God not through some external revelation or external science, but in the living activity and weaving. One must grasp the creation of the world by flowing within it, creating oneself unceasingly and thereby giving oneself its eternity.

But Fichte's essay was accused of atheism all the more. It is impossible to recount this dispute, this accusation of atheism, in full detail. It is basically terrible to see how Goethe and Karl August had to take sides against Fichte against their will; but how Fichte cannot be dissuaded, now, I would like to say, from striking out with his fist when he believes that he has to push through what he has to push through. So it comes about that Fichte hears that they want to do something against him, want to reprimand him. Goethe and Karl August would have liked nothing better than to have been able to give this reprimand. Fichte said to himself: To accept a reprimand for what one has to scoop out of the innermost sources of human knowledge would be to violate one's honor - not the honor of the person, but the honor of the spiritual endeavor. And so he first wrote a private letter to the minister Voigt in Weimar, which was then put on file, in which he said: He would never allow himself to be reprimanded; no, he would rather resign. And when Fichte wrote about things of this nature, he wrote as he spoke. It was said: He spoke cuttingly when it was necessary. So he also wrote cuttingly – to everyone, whoever it was. There was no other way to avoid a complete collapse in Jena than to accept the resignation that Fichte had not actually offered, because a private letter had been put on record. So it came about that Fichte had to leave his very beneficial teaching post in Jena in this way.

We see him soon after that appearing in Berlin. We see him there appearing, now grasping the standing of the ego in the weaving and ruling world spirit from a new side: “The Destiny of Man” he wrote at that time. But he wrote it in such a way that he put his whole being, his whole nature, into this work. In this work he wanted to show how those who only look at the world of the senses from the outside, and only combine it with the intellect, lead to a world view that is without substance. How this only leads to a dream of life is the content of the first part. How to get away from seeing the world as a chain of external necessities is the content of the second part. And the content of the third part of 'The Destiny of Man' is the examination of what happens to the soul when it tries to grasp in its inner being that which creates the inner life, and which is thereby not only an imprint but a co-creation in the great creation of all world existence. After finishing the work, Fichte wrote to his wife, whom he had left behind in Jena at the time: “I have never had such a deep insight into religion as when I completed this work ‘The Destiny of Man’.”

With a brief interlude in 1805, during which he stayed at the University of Erlangen, Fichte then spent the rest of his life in Berlin, first giving private lectures in a wide variety of homes, lectures that were very forceful; later he was called to help at the newly founded university, which we will talk about in a moment.

I said that, with a brief interlude in Erlangen, he had now returned to Berlin. For what he had to give people was something he was always drawing from his soul, and casting anew in ideal form. In Erlangen, he presented his scientific theory and his world view with great zeal. It is strange that while he had an increasing number of listeners when he began his lectures in Jena, and the same was true in Berlin, the audience in Erlangen halved during the semester. Well, we know how professors usually accept this decrease; anyone who has experienced this knows that it is simply accepted. This was not the case with Fichte. When the number of students in Erlangen had fallen by half, he spoke out – admittedly only to those who were present, not to those who had left, but he assumed that they would find out – and delivered one of those thunderous speeches in which he made it clear to the people that if they did not want to hear what he had to say to them, they would only be open to external historical knowledge, not to reasonable knowledge. And after he had added what man becomes in life if, as a spiritual seeker, he does not want to acquire this reasonable knowledge, he said: “The time in which I read? I have indeed heard how little satisfaction there is with the choice of the hour. I do not want to take this too strictly, concluding from principles that actually go without saying and that would have to be applied here. I just want to consider those who are affected to be ill-informed and report it better. They may say that it has always been this way. If this were true, I would have to reply that the university has always been in a very poor state... I myself have a similar college to this one in Jena, where I read to hundreds of people from 6-7 o'clock in the summer and winter, which used to get very crowded towards the end. I just have to say: when I arrived here, I chose this hour because there was no other left. Since I have recognized the way of thinking about it, I will choose it with care and do so in the future. The reason for all these abuses is that there is a deep inability to deal with oneself, and a wealth of shallowness and boredom when, after lunch has been consumed at 12 o'clock, one can no longer stand in the city. And if you were to prove to me – which, I hope, cannot be done – that this has been the custom in Erlangen since its founding, that it is the custom throughout Franconia, indeed throughout southern Germany, I will not shy away from replying that, accordingly, Erlangen and Franconia and all of southern Germany must be the home of shallowness and lack of spirit.” He delivered a thunderous speech. You can think of such a thunderous speech as you like, but it is genuinely Fichtian, Fichtian in the way that Fichte wanted to be in it and always was in it in what he wanted to bring to people spiritually; that Fichte did not just want to say something with what he said, but to do something for the souls, to reach the souls. Therefore, every soul that stayed away was a real loss, not for him, but for what he wanted to achieve for humanity. For Fichte, action was the word. He was rooted in the spiritual world, and this enabled him to stand with others in the spiritual world at the same time as in a common spiritual atmosphere; that he really did not just theoretically advocate the proposition: the outer sense world is not the real thing, but the spirit, and the one who knows the spirit also sees the spiritual being behind all sense being.

For him, this was not just theory, but a practical reality, so that later in Berlin the following could happen: He had gathered his audience in his lecture room. The lecture room was near the Spree Canal. Suddenly, a terrible message came: children, including Fichte's boy, had been playing down below, a boy had fallen into the water, and it was said to be Fichte's son. Fichte set out with another friend, and while the audience were all standing around, the boy was pulled out of the water. The boy looked very much like Fichte's son, but he was not. For a moment, however, Fichte had to believe that it was his son. The child was pulled out of the water dead. He took care of the child. Those who know what a close family life there was in Fichte's house between Fichte, his wife Johanna and their only son, who remained the only one, know what Fichte went through in that moment: the greatest horror he could have gone through, and the transition from the greatest personal horror to the greatest personal joy when he could take his son back in his arms. Then he went into an adjoining room, changed his clothes and continued his two-hour lecture in the way he had always given lectures before, completely immersed in the subject.

But not only that. Fichte often provided examples of such engagement in intellectual life. For example, during his time in Berlin, we find him giving lectures that were supposed to be a critique of the contemporary era, a severe indictment of this era. He took a similar approach when reviewing the individual eras of history. That alone, in which he lived, he said, was the one in which selfishness had reached its highest point. And into this age of selfishness he found himself placed as the one who embodied selfishness in the person of Napoleon. Fichte basically never thought of himself as anything other than the opponent in spirit to Napoleon at that time, while the Napoleonic chaos was descending on Central Europe. And there is one characteristic of Napoleon which may be said of him: in the image of the man of Germanic stock, in the blue coat, which was the image of the peasant boy as described earlier, there arose an image of Napoleon, which was just as much the product of the most profound Germanic strength and Germanic outlook as it was of the highest philosophical view of life. We have arrived at a time in human existence, as Fichte said, when we have lost the realization that the spirit and spiritual essence pulsates through the world and also through human life, runs through human development, and that man is only of value in the course of history to the extent that he is carried by what is preserved of moral impulses, of moral world order from epoch to epoch. But they know nothing of this. We have arrived at an age in which we see generation after generation in the world appearing like links in a chain. The best have forgotten, as Fichte said, what must run through these chain links as a moral worldview. Napoleon has been placed in this world. A source of tremendous power, but a human being, as Fichte said, in whose soul individual images of freedom can be found, but never a real idea, a real concept of true, comprehensive freedom, as it works from epoch to epoch in the moral ideal of human beings, in the moral world order. And from this fundamental defect, that a personality which is only a shell, which has no soul-core, can develop such power, from this phenomenon Fichte derived the personality and the whole misfortune, as he said, of Napoleon.

If we compare Fichte, the most powerful German world-view man with his idea of Napoleon, and Napoleon himself, then, in order to make the whole situation clear, we must refer to a saying of Napoleon's, which, as is told, he did on St. Helena after his fall, because it is only through this that the whole situation is fundamentally illuminated: everything, everything would have gone. I would not have fallen against all the powers that rose up against me. There was only one thing I did not reckon with, and that actually brought about my downfall: the German ideologues! Let the little minds talk about the ideology of this or that, this self-knowledge of Napoleon's weighs, I think, more than anything one might want to object to Fichte's idealism, which was, however, thoroughly practical.

That it is not difficult for an idealist like Fichte to be practical at times can be proved by Fichte himself, and in a truly historical way. It became necessary for him to join his father's business as a partner, after his brothers had taken it over. There he was, a partner in the ribbon-making business of his family. His parents were still alive. And now we can see how he fared as a partner in a ribbon-making business. He was a good, careful businessman who really was able to help his brothers, who remained pure business people, a lot. In the face of all those who say, “Ah, these idealists, they understand nothing of practical life, they are dreamers!” — Fichte, speaking from the very essence of his entire existence, was able to say, especially in the lectures he gave on “The Task of the Scholar,” words that must always be repeated in the face of those people who speak of the impracticality of ideals, of the impracticality of the spiritual world in general. When Fichte spoke about the destiny of the scholar, he said the following sentences in the preface: “That ideals cannot be represented in the real world, we know perhaps as well as they, perhaps better. We only claim that reality must be judged by them, and modified by those who feel the strength within themselves to do so. Even if they cannot be convinced of this, they lose very little by it, once they are what they are; and humanity loses nothing by it. It merely makes it clear that the plan for the ennoblement of humanity does not rely on them. The latter will undoubtedly continue on its way; let benign Nature rule over the former and give them rain and sunshine, wholesome nourishment and undisturbed circulation of the fluids, and with that - wise thoughts, in due time!” This German man already knew about the meaning of ideals, and also about the meaning of practical life in the right sense. But Fichte was precisely this nature that was turned in on itself. One may call this one-sidedness, but such one-sidedness must appear in life from time to time, just as forces in life must act in such a way that they occasionally overshoot the mark, so that in overshooting the mark they achieve the right result.

Certainly, there was some harshness mixed into Fichte's behavior when he did not just want to give moral lectures to the people in Jena, but also wanted to practically fight all of the students' idleness, all of the drinking, all of the loafing around. He had already gained a certain following among the student body. In addition, a number of people had submitted a petition that this or that association, which was particularly idle, should be abolished. But he was a gruff character, he was a person who did not know how to make soft hand movements, but instead sometimes beat the air roughly with his fist – all of course meant symbolically. So then what happened was that a large part of the Jena student body was quite opposed to Fichte's practical moral effectiveness. And they got together and broke his windows. Which then prompted Goethe, who admired Fichte and was admired by Fichte, to the good joke: Well, that's the philosopher who traces everything back to the ego. It is indeed an uncomfortable way to be convinced of the existence of the non-ego when one's windows are broken; that's what you get for being the non-ego, its opposite!

But all this cannot be proof to us that Fichte's way of philosophizing was not in complete harmony with Goethe's way of philosophizing. And Fichte felt this deeply when, on June 21, 1794, soon after he had begun his lectures in Jena, he wrote to Goethe, sending him the proofs of his Theory of Knowledge: “I regard you, and have always regarded you, as the representative... (of the purest spirituality of feeling) at the present level of humanity. It is to you that philosophy rightly turns: your feeling is the same touchstone.” And Goethe writes to Fichte when he has received the Theory of Knowledge: ”There is nothing in what you have sent that I do not understand or at least believe I understand, nothing that does not readily follow from my usual way of thinking.” And Goethe continues along the following lines: I believe that you will be able to present to human souls in a proper way that which nature has always been in agreement with, but with which human souls must come to terms. And if today someone who finds that science, which Fichte had printed at the time, dry and un-Goethean, were to claim that Goethe had no sense for this matter, then one would have to reply to him as I did when I published Fichte's letters to Goethe in the Goethe Yearbook in 1894 at the Goethe-Schiller-Archiv in Weimar. In the Goethe Schiller Archive, there are excerpts from Fichte's “Wissenschaftslehre” written by Goethe himself, where Goethe wrote down sentence by sentence the thoughts that came to him while reading Fichte's “Wissenschaftslehre”. And finally, one also understands how one of the most German of Germans, Goethe, at that time, out of the purest spirituality of feeling, out of which he sought a new world view, had to reach out to him who, out of reason-energy, as the most German of Germans at that time, sought a philosophical world view. Goethe once put it beautifully when he spoke of his relationship to Kant's philosophy. He said something like this, not literally, but completely in line with the meaning: Kant came along and said that by looking at the world, man could only have sensory knowledge. But sensory knowledge is merely an appearance, merely something that man himself brings into the world through his perception. Knowledge must be set aside; one can only come to freedom, to infinity, to an understanding of the divine-spiritual existence itself through a faith. And what one might undertake, not in order to arrive at a belief, but to arrive at an immediate beholding of the spiritual world, to a living and weaving of one's own creative activity in the creative activity of the divine world spirit, and which Kant believes one cannot undertake, of which Kant says it would be “the adventure of reason.” And Goethe says: Well, then one would have to dare to bravely endure this adventure of reason! And if one does not doubt the spiritual world, but believes in freedom and immortality, in God, why should one not bravely face this adventure of reason and, with the creator of the soul, be able to place oneself in the creative spirituality that pervades and interweaves the world, in the world itself? - Only in a different way from how Goethe wanted to face it, he still found it with Fichte.

And this urge towards spirituality, towards an understanding of the creative wisdom of the world, had to emerge one day, even if it was in a brusque manner, by the creative self experiencing itself as one with the creative world essence within it. And according to Fichte's view, this was to happen through his theory of knowledge. As we have been able to characterize it, it is a direct deed of the German people, for we see Fichte's soul growing up from the German people, and Fichte was aware that basically his philosophy was always a result of his lively interaction with the German national spirit. With that, the German national spirit has presented to the world what it itself had to say about the world and life and human goals. It presented itself in the way that it could only present itself, in that it happened at the first onset of such a rugged personality as Fichte was.

Fichte was not easy to deal with. For example, when the university was founded in Berlin and Fichte was to elaborate the plan, he formed an idea of the university and worked out the plan for this idea in great detail. But what did he want? He wanted to create something so fundamentally new at the University of Berlin, at that time at the beginning of the 19th century, that we may say, without any contradiction arising, that this new thing has not yet been realized anywhere in the world; that the world is still waiting for it to be realized. Of course, Fichte's plan has not been realized, although, as he put it, he wanted nothing more than to make the university an institute that meant “a school of the art of real use of the mind.” So it was not people who know this or that that were to come out of the university, who were philosophers or natural scientists or physicians or lawyers, but people who are so immersed in the overall structure of the world that they can fully master the art of using reason. Imagine what a blessing it would be if there were such a university somewhere in the world! If only an art school could be realized somewhere that would produce people who have brought their inner soul to life so that they can truly move freely in the essence of existence.

But this personality was not easy to handle; it was there to give history a powerful impetus. Fichte also became the second rector of the university. He took such an energetic approach to his job that he was only able to serve as rector for four months. Neither the students nor the authorities involved could stand what he wanted to implement for any longer. But all of this was forged out of German national character, just as it appeared in Fichte. For when he delivered his 'Speeches to the German Nation', about which I have already spoken here repeatedly, not only during the war but also before the war, as well as about the great phenomenon of Fichte in general, he knew that he wanted to tell the German people what he had, as it were, overheard through his meditative dialogue with the world spirit. He wanted nothing more than to stir in their souls that which can stir in the souls of men from the deepest source of Germanness. The way in which Fichte positioned himself in his time and in relation to those whom he wanted to move in the direction of a soul that was equal to the tasks of world existence was not, however, likely to make any impression on shallow, superficial people other than that of curiosity. But Fichte did not want to create that at all. Of course, it is always the easiest thing to do when something like Fichte's spirituality comes into the world, to make fun of it. Nothing is easier than to criticize, to make fun of it. People did that enough. That put Fichte in serious situations. For example, as soon as he came to the University of Jena, he was already in a rather serious situation because he could not really agree with those – well, they were also philosophers. For example, at the University of Jena there was the one who was the senior philosopher. His name was Schmid. He had spoken so disparagingly about what Fichte had achieved up to that point, even though Fichte was now to become his colleague, that it was actually shameful that Fichte was now to become his colleague. So Fichte said a few words in the journal in which Schmid had expressed himself. And so it went back and forth. Fichte actually took up his teaching post in Jena by having the Jena journal in which Schmid had written insert: “I declare that for me Mr. Schmid will no longer exist in the world.” — So he stood next to his colleague.

The situation was a serious one. A less serious, but no less significant one was this: a journal called “Der Freimütige” was published in Berlin at the time. Kotzebue, the “famous” German poet Kotzebue and yet another person were involved in publishing this journal, putting it together. It is actually impossible to find out - I really don't think even the most intimate clairvoyance could find out! what this Kotzebue actually wanted in Fichte's lectures back then. But only for a while could it not be found out. It later became clear because the most malicious attacks on Fichte's lectures appeared in the “Freimütigen”, which at the time was making itself quite important in Berlin. Fichte finally had enough. And lo and behold, he took a number of these “Freimütigen” and tore them apart in front of the audience, tearing them apart in such a way that he - which he could do - poured an invincible humor over what this “Freimütige” had to say. The face of one of the listeners, whose reason for attending was previously unknown, became longer and longer. And finally, Mr. Kotzebue stood up with a long face and declared that he no longer needed to listen to this! He then left and did not return. But Fichte was quite glad to be rid of him.

Yes, Fichte was already able to find a tone that directly grasped the situation, in the way he practically engaged with the life that he wanted to shape as the innermost life of human existence. Although he lived entirely in the spiritual world, he was not an unworldly idealist. He was a man who rested entirely on himself and who took with all seriousness what he found in himself as his essential nature. Therefore, at a certain time, when Napoleon had overcome Prussia and the French were in Berlin, he could not remain in Berlin. He did not want to be in the city that had been subjugated by the French. He went to Königsberg, and later to Copenhagen. He only returned when he wanted to appear as the German man who presented the innermost essence of his nationality, of being a nation, of his national character, to his fellow countrymen in the “Speeches to the German Nation”.

Fichte is rightly perceived as an immediate expression of German nationality, as the expression of that which, as spirit, always lives in our midst, insofar as we are able to grasp Germanness in its spirit, not only in thought, as a philosopher put it so beautifully, who as a philosopher was not at all in agreement agreement with Fichte, Robert Zimmermann, who said: “As long as a heart beats in Germany that can feel the shame of foreign domination, the memory of the brave will live on, who, in the moment of deepest humiliation, under the ruins of the collapsed monarchy of Frederick the Great, in the middle of French-occupied Berlin, occupied Berlin, in front of the eyes and ears of the enemies, among spies and informers, to raise the strength of the German people, broken from the outside by the sword, from the inside by the spirit, and to create it anew in the same moment that the political existence of the same seemed to be destroyed forever, through the inspiring idea of general education, undertook to recreate it in future generations.” Even today, I would like to reiterate that, with regard to the content of much of what is in the “Speeches to the German Nation” and indeed what is in Fichte's other writings, we may have to think quite differently. What is important is that we feel the German spirit flowing through its products, and the renewal of the German spirit with regard to its position in the universe, as it is given in the “Speeches to the German Nation”. That we feel this as the spirit that is in our midst and that we grasp it only in the one example of Fichte, through which he has placed himself in an admittedly initially remote way in the German development. This spirit wanted to place itself in the evolution of the world powerfully and energetically, but deeply inwardly. Therefore, even in the time when his twilight years were already approaching, Fichte found the opportunity, precisely in the most intimate way, to once again cast and renew his entire theory of knowledge, to meditate on it again, and to bring it to his Berlin audience in the fall of 1813, which he had grasped as his deepest thoughts. There he once again, in the manner described, seized the soul of his listeners, casting his gaze on how impossible it is for a person to come to understand existence and its reality without wanting to grasp this existence in the spirit, beyond all sensuality. But to those people who believe they see any true existence in the world of the senses and in what is formed only after the world of the senses, he called out in the lectures that belong to the last that Fichte spoke: “Their knowledge is lost in misunderstanding and empty words; and they praise themselves for it, and quite rightly find that it is so. Take seeing, for example: an image of an object is cast onto the retina. On the calm surface of the water, an image of the object is also reflected. So, in our opinion, does the surface of the water see? What is the added element that must come between this image and the actual seeing that is present with us, but not with the surface of the water? They do not even have a notion of this, because their sense does not go that far. A special sense, a new sense, Fichte says, must be realized within oneself if one wants to experience that being in the spirit that makes all other being comprehensible in the first place. “I am, and I am with all my goals only in a supersensible world!” This is one of the words that Fichte himself coined and which, like a leitmotif, runs through everything Fichte said throughout his life, which he reaffirmed in a different way that fall of 1813. And what was he talking about then? That people must become aware that one can never get behind true being in the way one sees things and the world in ordinary life and in ordinary science. One must become aware that a supersensible sense lives in every human being and that man can merge into a supersensible world, can live into this sense as a creator in his ego in the creative, weaving world spirit. It is, as Fichte says, as if a seeing person comes into a world of blind people and wants to make them understand the world of colors and forms, and the blind people refuse to believe him. Thus, the materialistically minded person, because he has no sense for it, denies the one who knows: I am, and I am in the supersensible world with all my goals and creations. And so Fichte impressed upon his listeners this being in the supersensible, this life in the spiritual, this handling of a supersensible-sensual that he said:

“The new sense is therefore the sense for the spirit; the one for which there is spirit, and nothing else at all, and to which the other, the given being, also takes on the form of the spirit, and is transformed into it, to which therefore being in its own form has indeed disappeared.”

It is a great thing that in this way the confession of the spirit has been made within the German development of thought, before those who wanted to seek what, in the highest sense, the German people have to say when they speak from the innermost part of their being. For it is through Fichte that the German people have spoken. And for Fichte more than for anyone else it is true that the German folk spirit at that stage, as it could speak, spoke to the German people.

Whether we look at him externally, this Fichte, or turn our soul's gaze to his soul, he always appears to us as the most direct expression of German nationality itself, of that which is not only present within Germanness at some time or other, but is always present; which, if only we know how to grasp it, is always among us. Precisely through what Fichte is, how he presents himself to us, presents himself so that we have his image vividly before our soul, we would like to see him, to listen to him in spirit when he creates an atmosphere that spreads between his soul and the soul of his listeners, that we want to be very close to him: that makes us feel we can feel him, I would like to say, like a legendary hero, like a spiritual hero, who, as a leader of his people, can always be seen in spirit if this people only understands him correctly. They can see him by vividly imagining him as one of their best spiritual heroes.

And today, in the age of action, when the German people must struggle for their existence in an incomparable way, the image of the one who , German character, from the highest point of view, but also in the most energetic, in a single way; to describe it in such a way that we can believe in him more than in any other: we have him directly among us when we understand him correctly. For everything in him is so very much of a piece, it presents itself so directly that he stands among us in all his liveliness as we contemplate him; whether the individual trait emerges from the totality of his being or whether we allow the most intimate sides of his soul to affect us, he stands before us as a whole. He cannot be grasped by us otherwise, otherwise he is grasped in a haphazard, superficial way.

Yes, he can be seen how he kindles in his people the soul's devotion to the life-giving powers of the world, working within the creator, how he rises with this soul to experience in the spirit, and how he integrates himself as life into the developmental progress of his people. One need only open the eye of the soul. He will not be understood if he is not understood in this vivid way. But if you open your soul's eye to the greatness of your people, then he is standing among us.

The way he sought to work differently from other teachers, by standing before his audience and not speaking but acting with his words, acting as if it mattered little to him what he said, because it was only meant to ignite the soul of the listener, because something should happen to the soul, something should be done, and because the souls should leave the hall differently than they entered it, — this has the very peculiar effect that he must become alive to us in the way he worked from the people into the people, and that we believe we hear him when he had heard in lonely meditation, by which he well prepared himself for every spoken lecture, what he had heard in his self-talk with the world spirit, now did not present to his listeners, but converted it into the word that is action, so that he released those to whom he had spoken as other people. They had become other people, but not through his power, but through the awakening and ignition of their own power. If we understand him correctly in this way, then we can believe that we hear him keenly, how he wants to grasp the spirit directly with his word, with the sharpness, with the sharp knife of his word, which he previously grasped in the soul, by placing, as has been said of him, not just good, but great people in the world through his care of the soul.

If you really bring to life what he was, you cannot help but hear his words, his words that seem to come from the spirit itself, which in this Fichte only made itself a tool to speak, to speak out of the spirit of the world itself, inspiring, awakening fire and warmth and light. His words were full of heartiness, and they drove courage forward. His words became spirited when they flowed through the ears into the souls and hearts of the listeners; they carried spiritedness out into the world when the fire that these words ignited in the souls of the listeners made these listeners, as we so often hear from those who were Fichte's contemporaries, go out into the world as the most capable men. If you open your spiritual ear, you can hear, if you understand Fichte at all, the one who speaks from the spirit of his people, directly as a contemporary. And whoever has an ear for such greatness of nation will hear it in the midst of us. And rarely will a spirit stand before us in such a way that we can follow everything that it is into every single act of life. Do we not see the duty, the moral world order, as he represented it at the height of his philosophy, when we see the boy, how he, at seven years old, because he has grasped the love for “Horned Siegfried” out of inclination, throws it into the water because he does not feel in harmony with his duties? Do we not see the pensive man preparing for his lectures, who knows how to focus his mind on the secrets of the world, in the boy standing outside in the pasture and letting his gaze wander for hours in one direction into the secrets of nature until the shepherd comes and leads him home? Do we not feel the whole fire that inspired Fichte, that inspired him on his lectern in Jena, and later, when he spoke to the representatives, as he said, of his entire people in the “Speeches to the German Nation”? Do we not feel it already there, where he, repeating the sermon of the country pastor, made an impression on Baron von Miltitz? Do we not feel this spirit very close to us in every single thing, even in the smallest acts of his life, if we are able to feel just a little spiritually? Do we not feel how soulfulness, heartiness, moral courage radiates from this spirit into all subsequent German development? Do we not feel the eternal life that lives there, even if we cannot agree with the individual in the “Speeches to the German Nation”? Although they were confiscated twice by the censor in 1824, they could not be killed. They live today and must live in souls.

How we can see him, this Fichte, in our midst! How we can hear him, if we understand him correctly! We can feel him, if we feel with our soul how he inspires his listeners, how he inspires the entire German nation in its more distant development, how that which he created, what he allowed to flow through the continuous developmental current of his people, must remain immortal! We cannot help it, if we understand him correctly, we must feel this spirit of Fichte among us.