If Luther awakened Germany to a sense of the dignity of individuality, it was through Fichte that she came to the consciousness of her national dignity and mission. Awakened by Luther, she led Europe in the reformation of religion; awakened by Fichte, she has come to lead the world in the advancement of culture and education. Let us now proceed to the examination of his ideal of “new education,” which alone, he thought, would save the country from degradation and ruin. When we think of the particular circumstances of his time and the fundamental characteristics of his personality, it is quite natural that the first aim of the new education was to make, above all, an independent ego, a self-active, self-determinate, creative personality, the master of himself and environment. He writes in his “Aphorisms on Education”: “To educate a man means to give him opportunities to make himself the complete master and ruler of his whole faculties.--The question is not what he _learns_, but what he _is_. If one actually is a reasonable and self-active being in every respect he will always with facility make himself such, as under the circumstances he should be” (4: p. 353). How can such a stable, unchangeable, personality be produced, which will always remain such, and can never be otherwise? Not by trusting to chance, but through a necessary law which works surely and infallibly. And what will this necessary law be? He answers: “Love, love of self-activity, love of the ideal world, love of universal moral law.” Will determines action, and love determines will. Love is, therefore, the only unfailing motive of all life activities. So, in order to produce a self-active being, the love of self-activity for its own sake must be cultivated and established in the child. The initiative activity on the part of the pupil should be cherished and promoted by every possible means. This is the first and principal task of educational art.