It would be as difficult to give, in short space, an adequate sketch of Fichte's philosophy as of Kant's. To him, however, reason was the expression of the will, not (as with Kant) the will an application of reason to action. "_Im Anfang war die That_" is good Fichteanism. While Kant continued the usual significance of the term Reason (with only such modifications as the rationalism of his century had made current), Fichte began the transformation which consummated in later German idealism. If the world of nature and of human relations is an expression of reason, then reason must be the sort of thing, and have the sort of attributes by means of which the world may be construed, no matter how far away this conception of reason takes us from the usual meaning of the term. To Fichte the formula which best described such aspects of the world and of life as he was interested in was effort at self-realization through struggle with difficulties and overcoming opposition. Hence his formula for reason was a Will which, having "posited" itself, then "posited" its antithesis in order, through further action subjugating this opposite, to conquer its own freedom. The doctrine of the primacy of the Deed, and of the Duty to achieve freedom through moral self-assertion against obstacles (which, after all, are there only to further this self-assertion) was one which could, with more or less plausibility, be derived from Kant. More to our present point, it was a doctrine which could be preached with noble moral fervor in connection with the difficulties and needs of a divided and conquered Germany. Fichte saw himself as the continuator of the work of Luther and Kant. His final "science of knowledge" brought the German people alone of the peoples of the world into the possession of the idea and ideal of absolute freedom. Hence the peculiar destiny of the German scholar and the German State. It was the duty and mission of German science and philosophy to contribute to the cause of the spiritual emancipation of humanity. Kant had already taught that the acts of men were to become gradually permeated by a spirit of rationality till there should be an equation of inner freedom of mind and outer freedom of action. Fichte's doctrine demanded an acceleration of the process. Men who have attained to a consciousness of the absolute freedom and self-activity must necessarily desire to see around them similar free beings. The scholar who is truly a scholar not merely knows, but he knows the nature of knowledge--its place and function as a manifestation of the Absolute. Hence he is, in a peculiar sense, the direct manifestation of God in the world--the true priest. And his priestly function consists in bringing other men to recognize moral freedom in its creative operation. Such is the dignity of education as conducted by those who have attained true philosophic insight.