Fichte is the first philosopher to declare plainly that no world-view is ethical which does not enable man to explain that an enthusiastic active devotion to the universe is something grounded in the nature of the world and of life. But the road he takes in order to develop this thought leads him astray. Instead of going more deeply into the question how ethical happenings, though coming from the world-spirit, and directed upon the world, are nevertheless different from normal world-happenings, and investigating the nature of this difference, he employs the trick, which had been made possible by Kant, of declaring, with the help of epistemological idealism, that the ethical world-view is a necessity of thought. Many of his contemporaries [pg 135] believe with him that it has thereby really reached a position of supremacy, and even those who cannot go with him the whole length of the philosophy of the Ego and Non-Ego, are gripped by the force of the ethical personality which speaks from Fichte’s writings. The direct effect, then, of Fichte’s philosophy is that the optimistic, ethical spirit of rationalism maintains its position and becomes stronger and deeper. His philosophy is a source of inspiration which produces a mighty impulse to ethics and civilization. But the vessel in which, with a magnificent wind behind him, he starts with his companions on a voyage over the sea of knowledge is a leaky one. A catastrophe is only a question of time. Fichte’s belief that he has obtained from the nature of the universe the living compulsion to ethical duty and ethical work which he feels within himself, is an illusion. The manner, however, in which he conceives the problem of the optimistic-ethical world-view, and perceives that for its solution the ordinary processes of life afford no help, so that more or less violent ones must be allowed to take their turn, reveals him as a great thinker. [pg 136] CHAPTER XII SCHILLER; GOETHE; SCHLEIERMACHER Schiller’s ethical world-view; Goethe’s world-view based on nature-philosophy VERY important is the fact that the deepened optimistic-ethical world-view of Kant and Fichte finds a champion in Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805), who brings it to the mass of the people with the force, added by poetical language. He is himself philosophically gifted, and undertakes in addition to develop it further. He wishes to broaden the foundation of the ethical by showing its relation to the æsthetic.