To get the full effect of a new doctrine it must be brought into contact with a mind unshackled by those traditional prepossessions which clung to its original author. Kant, essentially by training a man of the school, was by heart and character essentially a seeker after the wider ends of the larger world. His lesson is on one hand the scholar's disproof of pretended science, and on another an appeal and an example to the mere scholar to make his philosophy ample for the whole life, and co-extensive with the whole field of reality. His first disciples who stand forward as teachers caught only the first part of his message, and sought to set theoretical philosophy on a sounder basis. Johann Gottlieb Fichte--perhaps the least professional of great philosophical professors--with a resolute will, a passion for logical thoroughness, and great impulse to force mankind to be free and to realise liberty in an institution--was the first who really grappled with the searching questions that arose out of Kant's message to his age. His was a Kantism, not certainly always of the letter, nor indeed always of the spirit: yet for all that, there was substantial justice in his claim that his system supplied the presupposition which gives meaning and interconnexion to Kant's utterances[1]. It is, says the proverb, the first step that costs. And Fichte took that step. Before his impetuosity the cautelous clauses which besmirched the great purpose of Criticism shrunk away, the central truth was disengaged from its old-fashioned swaddling clothes, and openly announced itself as a renovating, almost a revolutionary principle.