Absorption in the Absolute by means of action is, as Fichte thinks, something prodigious, but, just like its counterpart, absorption in the Absolute which is effected by an act of thought, it is not ethical but supra-ethical. The element which is needed by the mysticism of absorption in the Absolute to make it ethical cannot be secured either by enhancing or by depreciating the will to activity. Fichte’s mysticism of activity in which man lets loose his energy in the world is related to the ethic of deed, just as Spinoza’s mysticism of knowledge in which man is absorbed in the world is related to that of self-perfecting, but it is only very incompletely that either can develop itself into a real ethic. The absorption in the Absolute which comes into actuality in an act of thought lies nearer to nature-philosophy than that which completes itself in an active deed. The Brahmans, the Buddha, Lao-tse, Chwang-tse, Spinoza, and the mystics of every age, have experienced the becoming one with the Absolute as a coming-to-rest in it. Fichte’s mysticism of activity lies more in the path of dualistic thinking than in that of real nature-philosophy. It is something which has been extorted by enthusiasm, but Fichte [pg 134] is devoted to it, and rightly, because he has a feeling that the interests of an active ethic are better guarded by it than by the other. Since, however, he thus once and for all decides for a nature-philosophy, he comes, dominated though he is by the ideal of an active ethic, more and more to the natural quietist consequences of a nature-philosophy. He goes through a process of evolution which brings him nearer to Spinoza’s world-view. In his _Instruction Concerning the Blessed Life_, which appeared in 1806, six years later than _The Destiny of Man_, it is to him no longer the ethical which in itself is the highest, but the religious. The ultimate meaning of life, as he now recognizes, is not to act in God, but to be merged in Him. “Self-annihilation is the gateway into the higher life.” He believes, indeed, that he is thereby merely deepening his world-view without diminishing its ethical energy, and he remains himself, right to the end, the fiery spirit which consumes itself in activity for promoting the progress of the world. But his thought has bent under the weight of nature-philosophy. Without clearly admitting it to himself, he recognizes that out of nature-philosophy there can be drawn only an intellectual, not an ethical meaning for the world and life. Spinoza observes with a smile how he retires upon the thought beyond which a nature philosophy cannot advance.