Fichte's place in the annals of philosophy depends on his academic treatises of 1794-98, and on his more popular works from the first date down to 1808. In a study of the philosopher as a whole it would be necessary to go beyond these dates, and take account of the displacement which a development of thought, which there is no good reason to suppose other than gradual, made in the scale of his earlier views. But for our purposes that is out of the question. In justice, however, it must be added that some things that seem inadequately treated, some shortcomings in catholicity of mind, would appear in another light if the later writings--not published till after Hegel's death--were duly taken into account. But even at the close of the century the advancing thought of Germany was seeking other leaders. [Footnote 1: Cf. notes and illustrations in vol. ii. p. 399.] [Footnote 2: Cf. notes and illustrations in vol. ii. p. 387.] [Footnote 3: Leibniz, _Werke,_ ed. Gerhardt, iv. p. 392.] [Footnote 4: Cf. notes and illustrations in vol. ii. p. 393.] [Footnote 5: The _antithesis_ has two members: the partial ego, and the non-ego, which confronts. The _synthesis_ is a putting together two separate things, so as to correlate them; but it falls short of what would be understood in some present usage by 'synthetic unity' which has a certain mystical ring. It is important for a student of Schelling or Hegel to remember this distinction of synthesis from 'absolute unity e.g. Schelling, _Werke_, v. 43.] [Footnote 6: _A = A_ is the more purely logical formula: _I=I_ presents it as a personal and metaphysical identity. The _A_, which is _-A,_ is to be distinguished from the _A_ which is opposed to _not-A._ But it is Fichte's standpoint to insist on their being one Ego.] [Footnote 7: To give this interpretation of the larger Ego as Life and Blessedness is to assume that the teaching, e. g. of the _Anweisung zum Seligen Leben,_ is the logical deepening of the earlier language about the Ego.] [Footnote 8: Cf. the description of mind as 4 a bundle of impressions.'] [Footnote 9: Especially given in the Grundriss des Eigenthümlichen der Wiss. (_Werke,_ i. 331). Of course Fichte goes through a corresponding 'deduction' of the emotional or moral nature. Schelling (_System des transcend. Idealismus_) works out the 'deduction' still more at length.] [Footnote 10: Fichte, _Werke_, i. 286.] [Footnote 11: Ibid. ii. 261.] [Footnote 12: It is perhaps hardly necessary to say that the state of affairs alluded to, which has its literary memorials in F. Schlegel's _Lucinde_, and in the warm defense of that book by Scheiermacher, was only a passing experiment in which a high-strung idealism amid a lax society sought for truth at all costs and dared a noble lie.] [Footnote 13: In the _Geschlossener Handelstaat_ (of 1800), the 'classical' document of characteristic German Socialism in its earlier and idealist phase.] CHAPTER XII. THE BEGINNINGS OF SCHELLING.