By defining ethics as activity which aims at subjecting the sensible world to reason, Fichte gives a cosmic formulation to the utilitarian ethic of rationalism, and thus [pg 129] produces a comprehensive and deep foundation for the ethical enthusiasm which was a discovery of his time. In this matter also he carries through something which hovered before the mind of Kant. Thereby he opposes the representatives of the popular philosophy of the Illumination, and in a polemical pamphlet he criticizes very severely Christoph Friedrich Nicolai. At bottom, however, the only reproach he can level at them is that they wish to go on housing ethics and belief in progress in the naïve world-view arrived at by the healthy human reason instead of accepting both of them from the world-view produced by the union of epistemological idealism and the categorical imperative. To persist in imperfect rationalism when the perfect has been made a reality by Kant and himself is, in his opinion, a crime against truth. To him the beginning of wisdom is insight into the paradox that “consciousness of the world of actuality springs from our need of action and not, _vice versâ_, our need of action from our consciousness of the world.” The spirit of Fichte’s world-view, then, is completely that of rationalism, only that it believes it has found itself at home with him in the real nature of Being, and now comes forward with still stronger conviction and a still more burning enthusiasm. In Fichte’s writings, men are positively driven with the lash to work for the improvement of the world. With impressive pathos he teaches them to obey the inner voice which urges them on to activity, and indicates to them their definite duty whatever may be the special circumstances of their existence, and to recognize in so doing that they are thus fulfilling the highest, and indeed the only destiny of their lives.