According to Fichte, the child naturally has respect for the right, the good, and the true. “The basis of all moral education is to know and firmly presume that there is such an instinct in the child, so that its manifestation may be recognized and developed higher and higher, through proper stimulation and the presentation of materials to satisfy it” (3: p. 417). Express instruction, admonition, and consciously directed and purposive discipline have no place; nay, such a course will only “kill the inner moral sense and form the heartless hypocrite” (4: p. 358). In the hidden depth of the child’s own heart, without being self-conscious, must morality spring forth by itself and gradually grow up and irradiate, as external relations increase and become clearer to him. This should be so and will be so, without any purposive interference from outside at all, so long as only pure, good examples surround the child, and all the bad, mean, and low ones are kept far from his eyes. “Beside this protective care, an educator has only to set forth a few self-evident and easily observable positive rules--such as, not to tell a lie, not speak or act voluntarily against one’s own conscience.” Conscience, the inner voice of conscience--here the universal laws of the moral world reveal themselves. Act always according to your conscience--this is the golden rule of morality. “According to all experience, this law takes hold upon the child’s mind with a wonderful power; it elevates him, gives him an internal stronghold, and becomes for him an inexhaustible fountain of inner integrity, which is the mother of all virtues, and which, being once acquired, one will never fall into a helpless depravity” (4: pp. 358-359). Fichte follows his master in saying that we have to perform duty simply because it is duty, and not from any calculation of personal pleasure. But he would not exclude from morality all feeling elements, as Kant did. For Kant, even liking or inclination of heart was a motive extraneous and even antagonistic to true morality. Fichte, on the contrary, thinks that we ought to advance in our morality so as to love the good from our innermost, necessary inclination or disposition. This alone will be the sure and stable basis of virtue and character. Instinct had no place in Kantian ethics; all must have come from reason--i. e., the enlightened will. But Fichte recognizes the existence of the moral instinct, and wants simply to develop it. Spontaneity and habituation were despised by Kant as mere mechanism unworthy of a rational creature, but for Fichte these are the highest goal of morality. Here, freedom and necessity are one; _ought_ is _must_. The aim of moral education is to establish firmly the inner necessity of morality, in the depths of the ego, so that the will wishes only the good and right, and cannot wish anything but the good and right.