The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. Fichte's Spirit Among Us

[ 1 ] We find ourselves in Rammenau in Upper Lusatia, a town near Kamenz, where Lessing was born. The year was 1769. A relatively small cottage stands by a stream. It is documented that the craft of ribbon weaving had been passed down through the generations of this household since the time of the Thirty Years’ War. The household was by no means even moderately prosperous; in fact, it was actually quite poor. A stream flows past the little house; standing by the stream is a seven-year-old boy, relatively small and rather stocky for his age, with red cheeks and lively eyes—though at this moment they betray deep sorrow. The boy has just thrown a book into the stream. The book floats away. The father comes out of the house and must have said something like the following to the boy: “Gottlieb, what on earth were you thinking! You’re throwing into the water something your father bought with his hard-earned money just to make you very happy!” — The father was very angry, for he had given the book to the boy Gottlieb as a gift only a short time ago—to the boy who, until then, had learned nothing from books other than what can be learned from the Bible and the hymnal.

[ 2 ] So what had actually happened? Young Gottlieb had, up to that point, absorbed with great inner fervor what had been taught to him from the Bible and the hymnal, and he was a boy who had done well in school. His father wanted to make him happy and one day bought him a copy of *The Horned Siegfried* as a gift. The boy Gottlieb became completely absorbed in reading *The Horned Siegfried*, and as a result, he was scolded for his forgetfulness and inattentiveness regarding everything he had previously been interested in—namely, his schoolwork. This cut the boy to the quick. He loved his newly received book, *The Horned Siegfried*, so dearly; he had developed such a deep interest in it, such deep affection for it. But on the other hand, the thought stood vividly before his mind: You have neglected your duty! These thoughts were swirling through the seven-year-old boy’s mind. So he went down to the stream and, without a second thought, threw the book into the stream. He received his punishment because, although he could tell his father the fact and his intention, he could not explain the actual, deeper reason.

[ 3 ] We follow the boy Gottlieb at this age into other situations in his life. We see him, for example, standing far away from his parents’ little cottage, out in a lonely pasture, starting at four o’clock in the afternoon, his gaze fixed on the distance, completely absorbed in the view that stretched out around him. He is still standing there at five, still standing there at six, still standing there when the bell rings for prayer. And the shepherd comes by and sees the boy standing there. He nudges him and reminds him that he should go home with him.

[ 4 ] Two years after the date we just mentioned, 1771, Baron von Miltitz was visiting the landowner in Rammenau. He had planned to travel there from his own estate in Oberau on a Sunday to have lunch and enjoy some socializing with his neighbors. He also wanted to hear the sermon beforehand. However, he arrived too late and was unable to hear the pastor of Rammenau, whom he knew to be a decent man. The sermon was already over. He was very sorry about this, and the fact that he was so sorry was widely discussed among the guests, the innkeeper, and the other people gathered there. Then someone said, “But there’s a boy in the village who might be able to repeat the sermon; we know this boy can do it.” And so they fetched Gottlieb, who was now nine years old. He came in his blue peasant smock; they asked him a few questions, and he answered them briefly with “yes” and “no.” He felt very out of place in such distinguished company. Then someone suggested that he repeat the sermon he had just heard. He gathered his thoughts, and out of a deep inner inspiration, with the most heartfelt commitment to every word, he repeated from beginning to end the sermon he had heard, in the presence of his landlord’s neighbor. And he repeated it in such a way that one had the feeling everything he said came directly from his own heart; he had absorbed it so deeply that it had become an integral part of himself. With inner fire and warmth, growing ever more fervent and ever more passionate, the nine-year-old Gottlieb delivered the entire sermon.

[ 5 ] This nine-year-old Gottlieb was the son of Christian Fichte, the knitter. The lord of the manor of Miltitz found himself deeply astonished by what he had witnessed, and said that he must see to the boy’s further development. And having this burden lifted must have been an extraordinary relief to the parents, given their meager financial circumstances, even though they loved their son dearly. For many children had been born after Gottlieb; it had become a large family, and they had to accept the help offered so generously by Baron von Miltitz. And Baron von Miltitz wanted to take young Gottlieb—the nine-year-old—with him right away, so deeply moved was he by what he had witnessed in the boy. And he took him with him to Oberau near Meissen. But young Gottlieb did not feel at home there at all, in the large house that was so different from everything he had grown accustomed to in his humble lace-maker’s cottage. Amid all that sophistication, he felt utterly unhappy. So he was sent to nearby Niederau to live with a pastor named Leberecht Krebel. And there Gottlieb grew up in a warm, loving environment, under the guidance of the outstanding Pastor Leberecht Krebel. He immersed himself deeply, deeply in everything that shone through in the conversations the brave pastor had with the exceptionally gifted boy. And when Gottlieb was thirteen years old, he was admitted to Schulpforta with the support of his benefactor.

[ 6 ] Now he had been transferred to the strict discipline of Schulpforta. This discipline did not particularly suit him. He noticed that the way the students lived together necessitated a certain amount of secrecy and cunning in their behavior toward the teachers and educators. At the same time, he was thoroughly dissatisfied with the way older boys were appointed as “senior assistants,” as they were called, to supervise the younger boys. Gottlieb had already absorbed *Robinson Crusoe* and many other stories by that time. At first, this school life had become unbearable to him. He could not reconcile it with his heart that, in a place where one was supposed to grow toward the spiritual world—so he felt—there would be secrecy, cunning, and deception. What to do? Well, he decided to set out into the wide world. So he set off, simply walking on. On the way, a thought, deeply rooted in his innermost feelings, occurred to him: Have you done the right thing? Are you allowed to do this? Where could he find guidance? He fell to his knees, offered a devout prayer, and waited until some inner sign from the spiritual worlds told him what to do. The inner sign was that he should turn back. He turned back of his own accord. It was a great stroke of luck that there was an exceptionally kind-hearted principal there, Principal Geisler, who listened to the whole story from young Gottlieb and felt deep inner compassion for him; he did not punish him, but instead put him in a position where young Gottlieb could now be much more content with himself and his surroundings than he could ever have hoped for. And so he was able to join the ranks of the most gifted teachers.

[ 7 ] His intellectual curiosity was not easily satisfied. Young Gottlieb, who even at that age yearned for the highest truths, was not actually allowed to read the works he had only heard about through hearsay: Goethe, Wieland, and especially Lessing—these were forbidden reading at Schulpforta at the time. But a teacher came along who was able to provide him with a remarkable read: Lessing’s *Anti-Goeze*, that polemic against Goeze, driven by inner strength, in which everything was contained that Lessing had to present as his creed—a lofty yet forthright way of thinking, expressed in free and candid language.

[ 8 ] Thus, at a relatively young age, Gottlieb absorbed what he could glean from this “Anti-Goeze.” He not only absorbed the ideas—which would have been the least of it for him—but also the style, the way of relating to the highest things, and the way of finding one’s way into a worldview; the young Gottlieb took all of this in.

[ 9 ] And so he grew up in Schulpforta. When it came time to write his final thesis, he chose a literary topic. It was a peculiar final thesis. It completely lacked what many young people do: infusing their school assignments with all sorts of philosophical ideas. There was no philosophy, no philosophical ideas or concepts to be found in this final paper. Instead, it revealed that the young man was intent on observing people, looking into them right down to the very depths of their hearts—a quest for understanding human nature. This was expressed particularly clearly in this very school assignment.

[ 10 ] In the meantime, the charitable Baron von Miltitz had died. The support that had so generously been provided to the young Gottlieb—Johann Gottlieb Fichte—dried up. Fichte took his high school graduation exams in Schulpforta, went to Jena, and was forced to live there in abject poverty. He could take no part in what student life in Jena entailed at that time. Through hard work, he had to earn from day to day what he needed for his bare subsistence. And he could devote only a few hours to nourishing his own deeply yearning spirit. Jena proved to be too small. Johann Gottlieb Fichte could not make a living there. He thought he would have an easier time in Leipzig, the larger city. There he tried to prepare himself for the position that represented the ideal of his father and mother—who were deeply devout people—namely, a Saxon parish, a position as a pastor. After all, I might say, he had shown himself to be, as it were, predestined for such a preaching position. He could immerse himself so deeply in the traditions of Scripture that even in his father’s house he was repeatedly asked to deliver short reflections on this or that Bible passage. He was asked to do so again when he was staying with the valiant pastor Leberecht Krebel. And whenever he was able to stay at home for a short time—in the village where his parents’ modest little house stood—he was allowed to preach there, for the local pastor was fond of him. And he preached in such a way that what he was able to convey—the Word of God, interpreted in an independent yet thoroughly biblical manner—seemed to flow from a sacred inspiration.

[ 11 ] So he decided to prepare for his rural theological vocation in Leipzig. But it was difficult. It was hard for him to find a teaching position that he believed he could handle. He occupied himself with grading papers and private tutoring. But this life became difficult for him. And above all: during this time, he was unable to truly advance his own spiritual development. He was already twenty-six years old. It was a difficult time for him. One day he had absolutely nothing left and no prospect of getting anything in the coming days; no prospect that, if things continued this way, he would ever be able to attain even the most modest profession he had set his sights on. He could receive only the most meager support from home; as I already mentioned, it was a family blessed with many children.

[ 12 ] One day he found himself standing on the brink of the abyss, and the question arose in his soul like a wild temptation: Is there no hope for this life? — He may not have fully brought it to his conscious awareness, but in the depths of his consciousness, self-inflicted death lay in wait. Then, at just the right moment, the poet Weiße—who had become his friend—appeared. He offered him a position as a private tutor in Zurich and made sure that he could actually take up this position in three months. And so, beginning in the fall of 1788, we find our Johann Gottlieb Fichte in Zurich. Let us once again try to follow him with the eye of the soul as he stands in the pulpit of Zurich Cathedral, now completely absorbed in his own interpretation of the Gospel of John, already fully imbued with the desire to convey what is expressed in the Bible in his own unique way. So that when one heard his inspiring words resound in Zurich Cathedral, one could believe that someone had risen who was able to pour the Bible into a completely new message, as if through a new inspiration. Many who heard him in Zurich Cathedral at that time certainly had this impression.

[ 13 ] And then, once again, we follow him into a different phase of his life. He became a tutor in the Ott household, at the “Zum Schwert” inn in Zurich. He only went along to a limited extent with the peculiar, prejudiced views that were directed at him there. He got along well with his pupils, but less so with their parents. And we get a sense of who Fichte is from the following. One day, the pupils’ mother received a curious letter from the tutor. What did this letter say? It said, more or less, that education was a task to which he—meaning himself, Johann Gottlieb Fichte—would gladly submit. And what he knew of the pupils and had learned from them gave him the confident assurance that he could accomplish quite a great deal with them. But the education must begin at a certain point; above all, the mother must be educated. For a mother who behaves in such a way toward her child is the greatest obstacle to an education in the home. - I need not describe the peculiar feelings with which Mrs. Ott in Zurich read this document. But the matter was set aside once again. Johann Gottlieb Fichte was able to work in a blessed way in the Ott household in Zurich until the spring of 1790—that is, for more than a year and a half.

[ 14 ] But Fichte was by no means suited to confine what his soul encompassed within the scope of his profession. He was by no means suited to turn his gaze away from what was taking place in the cultural life around him. Through his inner zeal and the deep involvement he felt in everything happening in the intellectual world around him, he grew into that very world. Indeed, he grew into all of it. In Switzerland, he grew into the ideas that filled everyone’s minds at that time—ideas that had spread from the burgeoning French Revolution. We can almost hear him, I would say, as he was in Olten, when he met a particularly gifted person, discussing with him the questions that so profoundly and significantly filled France and the world at that time; how he felt that these were the ideas to which one must now devote oneself; how he incorporated everything that preoccupied him inwardly—arising from his deep religiosity and his sharp intellect—into the ideas of human happiness, human rights, and lofty human ideals.

[ 15 ] Fichte was not a recluse who could merely develop his soul rigidly from within. This soul grew in tandem with the outside world. This soul felt, as if unconsciously, the duty of a human being not only to exist for oneself, but to stand as an expression of what the world desires in the time in which one lives. This was a profound feeling, a profound sensibility within Fichte. And so he grew together precisely at the time when he was, one might say, most receptive to the fusion of his soul with what lived and took shape in his intellectual environment—he grew together with the Swiss element, and from this Swiss-German element we always find an influence throughout the entire Fichte, as he later worked and lived.

[ 16 ] One must understand the profound difference between what is alive in Switzerland and what is alive—I would say—a little further north in Germany, if one is to grasp the impression that the Swiss environment, Swiss humanity, and human aspirations made on Fichte. It differs, for example, significantly from other forms of German culture in that it permeates everything that constitutes intellectual life with a certain element of self-confidence, so that the entire cultural element takes on a political expression; that everything is conceived in such a way that, through thought, a person feels placed directly within action, within the world. Art, science, and literature stand as individual tributaries of life as a whole, representing this Swiss German identity.

[ 17 ] This was what could also be combined in the most beautiful way with Fichte’s “element of the soul.” He, too, was a person who could not conceive of any human activity or any human endeavor in isolation. Every individual aspect had to be integrated into the totality of human action, human thought, human feeling, and the entire human worldview. In Fichte, too, what he was able to accomplish was directly linked to his ever-growing, immediate personality. Anyone who reads Fichte today, anyone who engages with his writings—which, in terms of content, often seem so dry—and with the intellectual brilliance of individual treatises and essays, will have no conception of what Fichte must have been like when he poured all his inner fire, his inner engagement with what he meant intellectually and what he had intellectually penetrated, into his speech. For what he was flowed out into his speech. That is why he even attempted—though it was an unsuccessful attempt—to found a school of public speaking back then in Zurich. For he believed that the way in which the spiritual can be conveyed to people can, in fact, have an entirely different effect than merely through content, however sound it may be.

[ 18 ] It was in Zurich, at the home of Rahn—a wealthy Swiss man at the time who was Klopstock’s brother-in-law—that Fichte found a stimulating circle of friends that deeply moved his soul. And Fichte developed a deep affection for the daughter, Johanna Rahn. A close friendship—which gradually blossomed into love—bound him to Klopstock’s niece. Eventually, his position as a private tutor in Zurich became untenable. Fichte had to look ahead. He did not want—even now, before he had made a name for himself in the world—as he often stated at the time—to somehow become a member of the Rahn household and live off the Rahn family’s resources. He wanted to continue seeking his path in the world; we must not speak of his “happiness,” but rather of his “path in the world.”

[ 19 ] He returned once again to Germany, to Leipzig. He planned to stay there for a while; he hoped to find there what might be his true calling—that form of spiritual expression he wished to make his life’s path. Then, after some time, he intended to return to freely develop what he had united with his soul. But then something unexpected happened that changed all his life plans. Rahn suffered a financial collapse and lost his entire fortune. Not only was he now tormented by the worry that the people dearest to him had fallen into poverty, but he was now, so to speak, forced to take up his walking stick and journey further into the world, having to abandon his cherished plans, which had revealed themselves to him from the depths of his soul.

[ 20 ] First, he was offered a position as a private tutor in Warsaw. However, as soon as he arrived there and introduced himself, the aristocrat in whose household he was to take up his post found that Fichte’s mannerisms—which even then, and later on, many considered firm and energetic—were actually awkward; that he had no talent whatsoever for fitting into any social circle. They made this clear to him. He could not bear it. So he left.

[ 21 ] His path now led him to the very place where he initially believed he might find a person whom he revered above all others—not only among those living at that time but of the entire era—and to whom he had drawn near after having, for a time, become completely absorbed in Spinoza’s worldview; a man whom he had drawn close to by studying his writings, into which he had immersed himself completely, so that—just as the Bible or other writings had once been for him—the writings of this man now stood before him in a very special, new form: namely, Immanuel Kant. He made his way to Königsberg. And he sat at the feet of the great teacher and found himself completely immersed in the way his soul could reflect what he considered the greatest teaching ever given to humanity. And within Fichte’s soul, what lived there—arising from his devout sensibility, from his reflections on divine providence and on the way in which the mysteries of this providence had always been revealed to humanity and to the world—merged with what he had learned and heard from Kant. And what arose in his soul, he crafted into a work to which he gave the title *Critique of All Revelation*. That was in 1792. Fichte was born in 1762; he was thirty years old. Something remarkable happened at that time. Kant immediately recommended a publisher for the work, by which he was enthralled: *Critique of All Revelation*. The work was published without the author’s name. No one thought it was anything other than a work by Immanuel Kant himself. Rave reviews poured in from all sides. This was unbearable for Fichte, who, again through Kant’s mediation, had by then secured a position as a private tutor—one that now suited him very well—in the distinguished Krockow household near Danzig, where he could also freely pursue his intellectual pursuits. It was unbearable for him to be viewed by the world in such a way that, when people spoke of his work, they were actually referring to someone else. The first edition, which soon went out of print, was followed by a second, in which he signed his own name. Now, however, he had a curious experience. Well, it was impossible—at least for a large number of critics—to say the exact opposite of what had been said earlier; but they did tone down the judgment they had previously held. It was yet another insight into human nature that Fichte had acquired.

[ 22 ] After spending some time in the Krockow household, he was able to form a plan—given the position he now held in society, not outwardly but intellectually (he had shown that he was capable of something)—to return to the Rahn household; that was the only way he could win Klopstock’s niece for himself, and now he was able to do so. And so, in 1793, he returned to Zurich. Klopstock’s niece became his wife.

[ 23 ] Not only was he now, in the deepest sense, continuing to develop what he had absorbed as Kantian ideas, but he also delved further into everything that had already occupied him during his first stay in Zurich; he immersed himself in the ideas about human goals and ideals that were now circulating throughout the world. And he wove together his own way of thinking about human aspirations and ideals with what was currently circulating in the world. And he was such an independent spirit that he could not help but tell the world what he thought about what the most radical minds were now thinking regarding human progress. *Contributions Toward Correcting Public Opinions on the French Revolution* was the title of the book he published in 1793.

[ 24 ] While working on this book, he was simultaneously engaged in a continuous, inner process of refining the philosophical ideas he had developed for himself based on Kant’s worldview. There must be a worldview, he told himself, which, stemming from a supreme impulse for human knowledge, could illuminate all knowledge. And this worldview—which inquires after the Supreme in such a way that one could never find anything higher for knowledge—was what Fichte envisioned as an ideal.

[ 25 ] Circumstances unfolded in a curious way. While he was still engaged in the internal elaboration of his ideas, he received a letter from Jena—specifically, from Jena-Weimar. Fichte’s achievements had made such an impression there that, when Karl Leonhard Reinhold left the University of Jena, Fichte was asked to take over the professorship of philosophy on the basis of his accomplishments. Those who were involved in the intellectual life of the University of Jena at the time welcomed with the deepest satisfaction the idea of bringing this spirit—who appeared to them, on the one hand, as a hothead, but on the other, as someone striving for the highest in matters of worldview—to what was then the most famous and most attended university of the German people.

[ 26 ] And now let us try to picture him in our mind’s eye as he took up his new position as a teacher. He wanted to convey the worldview that had taken shape within him to those who, beginning in 1794, were now his students. But Fichte was not a teacher like any other. Let us first consider what had taken shape within his soul. It cannot be expressed directly in his own words—that would take too long—but it can be characterized entirely from the perspective of his spirit. He sought a Supreme Being—one in whom the human spirit could grasp the flow of the universe, the mystery of the universe, at a single point; a point where the spirit was directly one with this flow of the universe, with this mystery of the universe. So that, by looking into this mystery of the universe, a person could connect their own existence with this mystery—and thus come to know it. This could not be found in any external, sensory existence. No eye, no ear, no other sense—nor even the ordinary human intellect—could find it. For everything that can be perceived externally through the senses must first be synthesized by the human intellect; it has its being in the external world; one can only call it “being” if one’s sense perception, so to speak, confirms that existence through what is observed. That is not true being. At the very least, one cannot initially form any judgment whatsoever about the true being of that which presents itself only to the senses. The source of all knowledge must spring from the innermost core of the “I” itself. But this cannot be something that is already fully existent, for something already fully existent within would be equivalent to what is presented to the external senses as something already fully existent. It must be something creative. This is the “I” itself—that “I” which creates itself anew at every moment; that “I” which is based not on a finished existence but on an inner act of creation; that “I” from which being cannot be taken away, because its being consists in its creation, in its self-creation. And into this self-creation flows everything that possesses true being. So let us step out with this “I” from all sensory existence, into the spheres where the spirit surges and weaves, where the spirit acts as a creative force! To grasp this spiritual life and activity there, where the “I” is united with the spiritual activity and weaving of the world; to become imbued with that which is not an external, completed existence, but rather what the “I” creates from the source of divine world life—first as the “I,” and then as that which constitutes the ideals of humanity, the great ideals of duty.

[ 27 ] Kantian philosophy had become part of Fichte’s very being. And so he did not wish to present his listeners with a ready-made doctrine; that was not what mattered to him. For Fichte, this was not a lecture like any other; it was not a doctrine like any other. No, when this man stood at the lectern, what he had to say there—or, rather, what he had to do there—was the result of a long meditation lasting many hours, during which he believed he saw the divine Being—that divine spiritual weaving and working that permeates and surges through the world. After he had long engaged in inner dialogue with himself about what the world spirit has to say to the soul regarding the mysteries of the world, he stepped before his listeners. Yet his aim was not to convey what he had to convey, but rather to ensure that a shared atmosphere spread out from him and over his listeners. His aim was for that which had come alive in his own soul regarding the mysteries of the world to also come immediately alive in the souls of his listeners. He wanted to awaken spiritual life; he wanted to awaken spiritual being. He wanted to draw forth from the souls of his listeners a self-creative spiritual activity as they hung on his every word. He did not merely convey information. What he wanted to give his listeners was something like the following. One day, when he wanted to illustrate this self-creative aspect of the “I”—how all thinking activity can arise within the “I,” and how a person can attain a true understanding of the mysteries of the worlds only by grasping this self-creative aspect within the “I” — when he was drawing his listeners into the spiritual world, as it were, leading each one by the spiritual hand into that world, and “wanted to achieve this,” he said, for example: “Imagine a wall, my listeners! Well, I hope you have now imagined a wall. The wall is now a thought, an image in your soul. Now imagine the one who thinks of the wall. Set aside all thoughts of the wall entirely. Think entirely, entirely of the one who thinks of the wall!”

[ 28 ] Some listeners grew restless, yet at the same time were deeply moved by the direct manner, by the direct relationship Fichte sought to establish with his audience. The spirit emanating from Fichte’s soul was meant to touch the spirit within his listeners.

[ 29 ] And so the man taught for years, never giving the same lecture twice, always shaping it anew. For what mattered to him was not conveying this or that in sentences, but rather awakening something new in his listeners. And time and again he repeated: What matters is not at all that what I say or have to say to people be repeated by this or that person, but rather that I succeed in kindling such flames in their souls that will inspire each person to become an independent thinker; that no one says what I have to say, but that each person is inspired by me to say what he himself has to say. — Fichte wanted to educate not disciples, but independent thinkers. If we trace the history of Fichte’s influence, we can understand: this most German of German philosophers did not, in fact, train disciples in the traditional sense; he did not found a school of philosophy. Capable men have emerged everywhere from this direct relationship he established with his students.

[ 30 ] Well, Fichte was aware—and indeed had to be aware, since he wanted to lead human consciousness up to the immediate grasp of creative spiritual reality—that he had to speak in a very special way. Fichte’s entire style was, in fact, difficult to grasp. Basically, no one who had ever participated in his style of teaching—such as he practiced back then in Jena—had ever heard anything like it before. Even Schiller was astonished by this, and speaking to Schiller once about the way in which he actually conceived of his work within his own consciousness, he put it, for example, as follows: “When people read what I say, they cannot possibly, reading as they do today, grasp what I actually mean to say.” - Then he picked up one of his books and tried to read aloud, just as he thought what he had to say should be read aloud. Then he said to Schiller: “You see, people today cannot declaim inwardly. But because what is contained in my sentences can only be brought out through true inner declamation, it simply doesn’t come across.”

[ 31 ] However, it was something entirely different that Fichte drew from his own periods. What he spoke was spoken language; therefore, even today, one should seek Fichte at the very heart of the entire life of the soul—to which one can devote oneself as the life of the soul of the entire German people; even today, one should still have the resolve to take in, through inner recitation and inner listening, what otherwise appears so dry and so sober in Fichte.

[ 32 ] Thus, as we allow Fichte’s intellectual development to unfold within our souls, we stand, so to speak, upon one of the intellectual peaks of his being. And our gaze may well wander back to this remarkable intellectual journey.

[ 33 ] We visited Johann Gottlieb Fichte as he stood before Baron von Miltitz in his blue peasant smock—a true, rosy-cheeked, stocky peasant child, with no education other than what a peasant child can have, yet such that this education was already, even at the age of nine, the innermost possession of his soul. We have before us an example of how, from the German people—entirely from the German people—a soul grows forth that initially takes in nothing but what lives within this German people, living in the immediate way of life of this people. We follow this soul through difficult life situations—this soul that is actually regarded as an ideal of remaining within the people, yet must yield to the innermost impulse, the innermost drive of its being. We follow this soul as it ascends to the highest heights of inner human experience and work, as it becomes a shaper of humanity in the manner we have just described. We trace the path that a German soul can take—a soul that grows directly out of the people and ascends to the highest heights of spiritual being through its own power alone.

[ 34 ] Fichte thus held his teaching position in Jena until the spring of 1799. There had already been all sorts of disagreements in the past. For Fichte was certainly not the kind of person who was easy to get along with, nor was he the sort who, in order to make himself more agreeable, would resort to all manner of detours in life or adopt a soft, accommodating demeanor in public. Yet one important point stands out, one that is significant for German life as a whole during that period.

[ 35 ] The one who derived particular satisfaction—and who, in this satisfaction, agreed with Goethe that he could appoint this man, Fichte, to his university in Jena—was Karl August. And I believe one can draw a conclusion about the complete lack of prejudice on the part of Karl August, who appointed to his university the man who had applied Kantian philosophy to revelation in the freest manner possible—but not only that—who appointed to his university the man who had advocated, in the freest and most unreserved manner, for the freest goals of human development. I believe we would not do justice to Karl August, this great mind, if we did not draw attention to the high degree of open-mindedness that this German prince needed at the time to appoint Fichte. Goethe called this appointment a bold move. But I would like to say that Karl August and Goethe—who were, after all, the very soul of this appointment—took it upon themselves, against a world of prejudice, to bring Fichte to Jena. I say it would almost be an injustice not to highlight the degree to which Karl August’s open-mindedness had developed. And to this end, I would like to read a sentence from Fichte’s book titled *Contributions to the Correction of Public Opinions on the French Revolution*: “They”—he means the princes of Europe, including the princes of Germany—“who are for the most part raised in idleness and ignorance, or, if they know anything at all, know a truth expressly tailored for them; they, who, as is well known, do not continue to cultivate their education once they begin to rule, who read no new writings—at most, perhaps, some verbose sophistry—and who are always, at least during their years of rule, behind the times...” This was written in the last book Fichte had authored—and Karl August appointed this man to his university.

[ 36 ] If one delves a little into the overall situation in which Fichte and those who appointed him found themselves, one comes to the conclusion: In fact, the people who shared the outlook of the great, generous-hearted Karl August and Goethe waged a campaign against those in their immediate circle who were as opposed as possible to Fichte’s appointment. And it was a campaign that was by no means easy to undertake, for, as I said, building a state in the sense that people generally build states in the world was not possible with Fichte. Fichte was indeed a man who, through his eccentricities and his brusqueness, hurt everyone whom one would actually have preferred not to see hurt. Fichte was not a man who made gentle gestures with his hand. Fichte was a man who, when something did not sit right with him, would strike out at the world with his fist. The way in which Fichte, with all his might, presented to the world what he had to say at that time was not easy for Goethe and Karl August; they found it very difficult and groaned somewhat under the burden.

[ 37 ] And so, little by little, the storms began to brew. Fichte, for example, wanted to give lectures on morality—lectures that were published as “Lectures on Morality for Scholars.” He could find no time for them except on Sundays. But this was a terrible thing for all those who believed that Sunday would be desecrated if one were to speak to the students in Jena on Sunday about morality in Fichte’s sense. And all manner of complaints were brought before the Weimar government, before Goethe, but also before Karl August. The entire Jena faculty expressed the view that it would indeed cause a tremendous stir and discord if Fichte were to give lectures on morality at the university on Sundays—especially since he had chosen the very time when the afternoon church service was taking place. Karl August had to yield the field, so to speak, to Fichte’s opponents in this matter. Yet it would not be right, however, if we did not once again make known today exactly how he had gone about it. At that time, Karl August wrote to the University of Jena:

[ 38 ] “Thus, in response to your request, We have resolved that the aforementioned Professor Fichte shall be permitted to continue his lectures on ethics on Sundays, at the very latest, only during the hours following the conclusion of the afternoon church service.” The decree explicitly referred to the fact that “something as unusual as scheduling lectures on Sunday during the hours designated for public worship” was taking place. However, when Karl August issued this decree, he could not help but add the following words: “We have gladly convinced ourselves that, if his (Fichte’s) moral lectures resemble the excellent essay appended to the …, they can be of outstanding benefit.” But the controversy persisted. One might say that his opponents would not let up. And so, in 1799, the ill-fated atheism controversy arose, as a result of which Fichte was forced to leave his teaching position in Jena. Forberg, a younger man, had written an essay in the journal that Fichte was editing at the time, which had been accused of atheism by certain quarters. Fichte, for his part, already found what this young man had written to be imprudent, and he wanted to add some marginal notes to it. But Forberg, in turn, did not agree to this. And Fichte, in his free-spirited manner—which he practiced not only in grand matters but down to the smallest details—did not want to reject this essay simply because he disagreed with it. Nor did he want to add marginal notes against the author’s will. Instead, he sent an essay of his own, “On the Basis of Our Faith in a Divine World Government.” In it were words that were entirely imbued with genuine—one might say, elevated to the most spiritual level—true, heartfelt devotion to God and piety, but precisely elevated to the most spiritual level, to that spiritual realm of which Fichte wished to say that it was the only reality; that one can grasp reality at all only when one feels oneself moving with one’s self within the spiritual, standing within the spiritual current of the world. One must then grasp the existence of God not through any external revelation or external science, but through living action and interweaving. One must grasp the creation of the world by flowing within it, ceaselessly creating oneself and thereby bestowing upon oneself one’s own eternity.

[ 39 ] But this essay by Fichte was accused of atheism all the more. It is impossible to recount this controversy—this accusation of atheism—in full detail. It is, in fact, terrible to see how Goethe and Karl August were forced, against their will, to take sides against Fichte; yet Fichte would not be deterred in the slightest—I might say, he would strike out with his fist right before him whenever he believed he had to bring about in the world what he was meant to bring about. And so it came to pass that Fichte heard: that something was being planned against him, that he was to be reprimanded. Goethe and Karl August would have preferred it if this reprimand could have been carried out. Fichte told himself: To accept a reprimand for what one must draw from the innermost sources of human knowledge would mean violating honor itself—not the honor of the person, but the honor of intellectual endeavor. And so he first wrote a private letter to Minister Voigt in Weimar—which was then filed away—in which he stated: He would never allow himself to be reprimanded; no, he would rather resign. And when Fichte wrote about matters of this kind, he wrote just as he spoke. It was said: He spoke sharply when necessary. So he also wrote sharply—to whomever it might be. One had no choice, if one did not want everything in Jena to go haywire, but to accept the dismissal that Fichte had not actually offered, for a private letter had, after all, been placed on file. Thus it came to pass that Fichte was forced to leave his most beneficial teaching position in Jena in this manner.

[ 40 ] We see him appear in Berlin shortly thereafter. There we see him emerge as he once again grasps, from a new perspective, the place of the “I” within the weaving and reigning spirit of the world: “The Destiny of Man,” he wrote at that time. But he wrote it in such a way that he poured his entire being, his whole essence, into this work. In this work of his, he sought to show how those who view the sensory world only superficially and combine it solely with the intellect are led to a worldview devoid of essence; how, in this way, one arrives only at a dream of life—this forms the content of the first part. How one ceases to view the world as a chain of external necessities is the content of the second part. And the content of the third part of *The Destiny of Man* then consists of an examination of what happens to the soul when it attempts to grasp within itself that which creates inner life—and which, in doing so, is not merely an imprint but a co-creation in that great creation of all worldly existence. After completing the work, Fichte wrote to his wife, whom he had left behind in Jena at the time: “I have never before gained such a profound insight into religion as I did while completing this work, *The Destiny of Man*.”

[ 41 ] With the exception of a brief interlude in 1805, during which he was at the University of Erlangen, Fichte then spent the rest of his life in Berlin, initially giving private lectures in a wide variety of homes—lectures that were deeply compelling—and later being appointed to assist at the newly founded university, which we will discuss shortly.

[ 42 ] I said that, after a brief interlude in Erlangen, he had once again taken up his work in Berlin. For what he had to offer people was drawn anew, time and again, from the depths of his soul; constantly casting what he had to give into a fresh, ideal form, he presented his scientific teachings and his worldview in Erlangen with full zeal. It is curious—while he had a growing audience in Jena when he began his lectures, and this was also the case in Berlin, his audience in Erlangen dwindled to half its size over the course of the semester. Well, we know how professors usually accept such a decline; anyone who has experienced it knows that it is simply accepted. For Fichte, this was not the case. When the audience in Erlangen had dwindled to half its size, he once took the floor—though only before those who were listening, not before those who had stayed away, but he assumed they would find out—and delivered one of those thunderous speeches in which he made it clear to the people that if they did not want to hear what he had to say, they were only capable of acquiring superficial, historical knowledge, not rational knowledge. And after he had added what becomes of a person in life if, as one who strives intellectually, he does not wish to acquire this rational knowledge, he said: “The time at which I read?—I have indeed heard how dissatisfied people are with the choice of hour. I do not wish to take this too strictly, based on principles that are actually self-evident and that ought to be applied here. I merely wish to consider those affected by this to be poorly informed and to set them straight. For they might say: this has always been the case. If that were true, I would have to reply that the state of the university has always been very poor... I myself have taught a similar course at Jena, summer and winter from 6 to 7 o’clock to hundreds of students, with attendance tending to increase significantly toward the end of the class. I must simply state plainly: when I arrived here, I chose this time slot because no other was available. Now that I have recognized the reasoning behind it, I will choose it with care and do so next summer. The root of all those abuses is this: it reveals a profound inability to engage with oneself, and an abundance of shallowness and boredom, when—after lunch has been eaten, God willing, at noon—one can no longer bear to stay in the city. And if you were to provide me with proof—which, I hope, will prove impossible—that this has been the custom in Erlangen since its founding, that it is the custom throughout Franconia, indeed throughout all of southern Germany, then I will not shy away from responding that, according to this, shallowness and spiritlessness must have taken root in Erlangen, in Franconia, and throughout all of southern Germany.” He delivered a thunderous speech. Whatever one may think of such a thunderous speech, it is truly “Fichtian”—Fichtian in the sense that Fichte wanted to be at the very heart of what he sought to convey to people intellectually, and indeed was always at the heart of it; that with what he spoke, Fichte did not merely want to say something, but to do something for the souls, to move them. That is why every soul that stayed away was a real loss—not for him, but for what he wanted to achieve for humanity. For Fichte, the word was action. Thus he was immersed in the spiritual world, and this gave him the ability to stand, together with others, simultaneously within the spiritual world as if in a shared spiritual atmosphere; for he truly championed—not merely in theory—the proposition: “The external sensory world is not the real; rather, it is the Spirit, and whoever knows the Spirit also sees spiritual being behind all sensory existence.”

[ 43 ] For him, this was not merely theory; it was a practical reality, so much so that the following incident could later take place in Berlin: He had gathered his audience in his lecture hall. The lecture hall was located near the Spree Canal. Suddenly, a terrible message arrived: Children—among them Fichte’s son—had been playing down below; a boy had fallen into the water, and people said it was Fichte’s son. Fichte set out with another friend, and while the audience stood around watching, the boy was pulled from the water. The boy looked very much like Fichte’s son, but he was not. For a moment, however, Fichte had to believe it was his son. The child was pulled from the water, dead. He tried to revive the child. Anyone who knows what a close-knit family life prevailed in the Fichte household—between Fichte, his wife Johanna, and this only son, who remained their only child—knows what Fichte went through at that moment: the greatest terror he could have endured, and the transition from the greatest personal terror to the greatest personal joy when he was able to hold his son in his arms once more. Then he went into an adjoining room, changed his clothes, and continued his two-hour lecture in the manner in which he had always delivered it, fully immersed in the subject matter.

[ 44 ] Incidentally, that’s not all. Fichte often provided examples of this kind of immersion in intellectual life. For example, during his time in Berlin, we find him giving lectures intended as a critique of the contemporary era—a serious indictment of that age. In this way, he surveyed the individual eras of history. The age in which he himself lived, he said, was the one in which selfishness had reached its peak. And within this age of selfishness, he found Napoleon positioned as the one who embodied selfishness in person. Deep down, Fichte never saw himself as anything other than Napoleon’s spiritual adversary at that time, as Napoleonic chaos swept across Central Europe. And there is a characteristic of Napoleon about which one can say: In what the peasant boy in the blue smock described earlier had matured into, an image of Napoleon arose in the German man—an image emerging just as much from the innermost German strength and German worldview as from the highest philosophical conception of life. We have arrived at a state of human existence in the present, as Fichte said, in which we have lost the realization that spiritual forces and spiritual beings pulse through the world and also run through human life, run through human development, carrying people from epoch to epoch as moral impulses, and that a human being is of value in the course of history only to the extent that he is carried by what is preserved in moral impulses and in the moral world order from epoch to epoch. But people know nothing of this. We have arrived at an age in which generation after generation is seen to appear in the world like one link in a chain after another. Even the best among us, as Fichte said, have forgotten what must run through these links as a moral worldview. It is into this world that Napoleon has been thrust. A source of immense power, yet a man, as Fichte said, in whose soul one may indeed find individual images of freedom, but never a true idea, a true concept of genuine, all-encompassing freedom—such as it operates from one epoch to the next in the moral ideal of humankind, in the moral world order. And from this fundamental deficiency—that a personality which is merely a shell, which has no core of the soul, can unleash such power—from this phenomenon, Fichte derived the personality and the entire misfortune, as he put it: Napoleon.

[ 45 ] If one compares Fichte—the most powerful German thinker, with his conception of Napoleon—and Napoleon himself, then, to clarify the entire situation, one must point to a statement Napoleon is said to have made on Saint Helena after his downfall; for it is this that truly sheds light on the whole situation: “Everything, everything would have worked out.” I would not have fallen against all the powers that rose up against me. There was only one thing I did not count on, and that is what actually brought about my downfall: the German ideologists! Let the small-minded speak of the ideology of this or that; Napoleon’s self-awareness, I believe, carries more weight than anything one might wish to object to in Fichte’s idealism—which was, after all, thoroughly practical.

[ 46 ] That it is, after all, not difficult for an idealist such as Fichte to be practical on occasion—we can prove this in Fichte’s case, prove it historically and accurately. It had, in fact, become necessary for him to join his father’s business as a partner—a business that his brothers had now taken over. So there he was, a partner in his family’s knitting business. His parents were still alive. And one can now also observe how he fared as a business partner in a knitting business. He was a good, cautious businessman who was truly able to provide his brothers—who had remained purely business-minded—with valuable guidance. In contrast to all those who say: “Oh, these idealists—they understand nothing of practical life; they’re just dreamers!”—Fichte, drawing from the very essence of his entire being, was able—precisely in the lectures he delivered on “The Vocation of the Scholar”—to speak words that must be repeated time and again to those who speak of the impracticality of ideals, of the impracticality of the spiritual world in general. When Fichte spoke about the Vocation of the Scholar, he wrote the following in the preface: “We others know perhaps as well as they do—perhaps even better—that ideals cannot be realized in the real world. We merely assert that reality must be judged by them and, by those who feel the strength within themselves to do so, modified accordingly. Suppose they could not be convinced of this either; even so, once they are what they are, they lose very little in the process; and humanity loses nothing in the process. It merely becomes clear that they alone are not factored into the plan for the ennoblement of humanity. Humanity will undoubtedly continue on its path; as for them, may benevolent Nature take charge and grant them, in due time, rain and sunshine, wholesome nourishment, and the unimpeded flow of their life forces—and, in the process, wise thoughts!” This German man already understood the significance of ideals, as well as the significance of practical life in the true sense. But Fichte was precisely this nature turned in on itself. One may call this one-sidedness—yet such one-sidedness must sometimes occur in life, just as forces in life must sometimes go beyond the goal so that, by going beyond the goal, they may bring about what is right.

[ 47 ] Certainly, there was a certain brusqueness in Fichte’s behavior when, in Jena, he did not merely want to give moral lectures to the students, but also wanted to combat, in practical terms, all their idleness, all their drunkenness, and all their loitering. He had already gained a certain following among the student body. In addition, a number of people had submitted a petition calling for the abolition of this or that student association that was particularly given to loafing. But he was, after all, a brusque sort of man; he was someone who did not know how to make gentle hand gestures, but would sometimes pound the air roughly with his fist—all meant symbolically, of course. So it came to pass that, first and foremost, a large portion of the Jena student body found Fichte’s practical moral activism quite repugnant. And they banded together and smashed his windows. This then prompted Goethe—who revered Fichte, and who was in turn revered by Fichte—to make the witty remark: “Well, yes, that is the philosopher who traces everything back to the ‘I.’” It is, after all, an uncomfortable way to be convinced of the existence of the non-self when one’s windows are smashed; that is what one has posited from the non-self as its opposite!

[ 48 ] But none of this can serve as proof that Fichte’s way of philosophizing would not have been in complete harmony with Goethe’s way of philosophizing. And Fichte spoke from the heart when, on June 21, 1794—shortly after he had begun his lectures in Jena—he wrote to Goethe upon sending him the proof sheets of his *Science of Knowledge*: “I regard you, and have always regarded you, as the representative... (of the purest spirituality of feeling) at the stage of humanity currently attained. Philosophy rightly turns to you: your feeling is its touchstone.” And Goethe writes to Fichte after receiving *The Science of Knowledge*: “What you have sent contains nothing that I do not understand or at least believe I understand, nothing that does not willingly align with my customary way of thinking.” And Goethe goes on to write, in essence: I believe you will be able to present to these human souls, in the right way, that which nature has always been in harmony with, but with which human souls must yet come into harmony. — And if today someone were to find that *Science of Knowledge*, which Fichte had printed at the time, dry and un-Goethian, and were to claim, for example, that Goethe had no interest in this matter, then one would have to reply to him as I did when I published Fichte’s letters to Goethe in the *Goethe-Jahrbuch* of 1894 at the Goethe-Schiller Archive in Weimar. In the Goethe-Schiller Archive there are excerpts from Fichte’s *Science of Knowledge* written by Goethe himself, in which Goethe jotted down, sentence by sentence, the thoughts that came to him while reading Fichte’s *Science of Knowledge*. And finally, one also comes to understand how Goethe—one of the most German of Germans—at that time, drawing from the purest spirituality of feeling, from which he sought a new worldview, had to reach out to the one who, driven by the energy of reason and regarded as the most German of Germans at the time, was seeking a philosophical worldview. Goethe once put it beautifully into words when he spoke of his relationship to Kant’s philosophy. He said something like this—not verbatim, but fully in keeping with the meaning: Then Kant appeared and said that when a person turns their gaze toward the world, they can have only sensory knowledge. But sensory knowledge, he argued, is merely an appearance, merely something that a person themselves introduces into the world through their perception. Knowledge must be set aside; one can only arrive at freedom, at infinity, and at a conception of divine-spiritual existence itself through faith. And whatever one might undertake—not to arrive at a belief, but to attain a direct perception of the spiritual world, to live and weave one’s own creative work into the creative work of the divine world spirit—and which Kant believes cannot be undertaken, Kant calls “the adventure of reason.” And Goethe says: Well, then one must certainly dare to courageously undertake this adventure of reason! And if one does not doubt the spiritual world, but rather believes in freedom and immortality, in God, why should one not bravely undertake this adventure of reason and, through the soul’s creative power, immerse oneself in the creative spirituality that surges through and weaves through the world, within the world itself? - Yet he found it in Fichte, albeit in a different way than Goethe intended.

[ 49 ] And this striving toward spirituality—toward grasping the creative wisdom of the world—was bound to emerge at some point, even if in a brusque manner, as the creative self experiences itself within the creative essence of the world, at one with it. And according to Fichte’s view, this was to be achieved through his *Science of Knowledge*. As we have characterized it, this is a direct act of the German people, for we see Fichte’s soul rising to great heights from within the German people, and Fichte was aware that, at its core, his philosophy was always the result of his living interaction with the German national spirit. In this way, the German national spirit has presented to the world what it itself had to say about the world, life, and human goals. It has presented it in the only way possible, namely by first taking shape in a personality as rugged as Fichte’s.

[ 50 ] Fichte was not easy to deal with. For example, when the University of Berlin was to be founded and Fichte was tasked with drafting the plan, he formed a vision of the university and worked out the plan based on that vision in every detail. But what did he actually want? He wanted to create something so fundamentally new at the University of Berlin—back then, at the beginning of the 19th century—that we can say, without any possible objection, that this new thing has still not been realized anywhere in the world today; that the world is still waiting for its realization. Of course, Fichte’s plan was never realized, even though, as he put it, he wanted nothing more than to make the university an institution that would be “a school of the art of the actual use of reason.” Thus, the university should not produce people who know this or that—be they philosophers, natural scientists, physicians, or lawyers—but rather people who are so deeply immersed in the overall fabric of the world that they can fully master the art of using reason. Just imagine what a blessing it would be if such a university existed somewhere in the world! If only such a school of the arts were truly realized somewhere, producing people who have brought their inner spiritual life to such vivid life that they could move truly freely within the very logic of existence.

[ 51 ] But this figure was by no means easy to deal with; he was destined to make a powerful impact on history. Fichte also became the university’s second rector. He approached his role with such vigor that he could only serve as rector for four months. Neither the students nor the relevant authorities could tolerate what he sought to implement for any longer. All of this, however, stems from the German national character—exactly as it manifested itself in Fichte—forged from the German national character. For when he delivered his “Addresses to the German Nation”—which I have discussed here repeatedly, not only during the war but also before it, as I have spoken of Fichte’s great significance in general—he knew that he wanted to convey to the German people what he had, as it were, overheard through his meditative dialogue with the World Spirit. His sole intention at that time was to evoke nothing other than this: that within their souls should stir that which, from the deepest wellspring of German being, can stir within the souls of human beings. This manner in which Fichte presented himself in his time and to those whom he wished to guide in a direction commensurate with the tasks of existence in the world—this was certainly not suited to making any impression on shallow, superficial people other than, at most, one of curiosity. But that was precisely what Fichte did not wish to evoke at all. It goes without saying that whenever something like Fichte’s spirituality enters the world, it is always the easiest thing to make fun of it. Nothing is easier than to criticize, to make fun of something. People did that plenty. This put Fichte in serious predicaments. For example, as soon as he arrived at the University of Jena, he found himself in a rather serious predicament because he could not quite see eye to eye with those—well, who were also philosophers. For instance, at the University of Jena there was this one individual who was a philosopher obsessed with being. His name was Schmid. He had spoken so disparagingly about what Fichte—who was now to become his colleague—had accomplished up to that point that it was actually quite shameful that Fichte was now to become his colleague. So Fichte responded with a few words in the very journal in which Schmid had published his remarks. And it went back and forth like that. Fichte actually began his teaching position in Jena by having the following published in the Jena journal where Schmid had written: “I declare that, as far as I am concerned, Mr. Schmid will no longer exist in this world.” — In this way, he positioned himself alongside his colleagues.

[ 52 ] That was a serious situation. A less serious, but no less telling one was this: A magazine called *Der Freimütige* was published in Berlin at the time. Kotzebue—the “famous” German poet Kotzebue—and one other person were involved in publishing this magazine; they put it together. One can’t really figure out—I truly believe that not even through the most intimate clairvoyance could one figure out!—what this Kotzebue was actually after in Fichte’s lectures at the time. But it was only for a while that no one could quite figure it out. Later it became clear, because the *Freimütige*—which was quite influential in Berlin at the time—published the most scathing attacks on Fichte’s lectures. At one point, Fichte had—well, let’s say—had enough of it. And lo and behold, he picked up an issue of this *Freimütiger* and tore it to shreds in front of the audience, tearing it apart in such a way that—as best he could—he poured an irresistible sense of humor over whatever this *Freimütiger* had to say. The face of one of the listeners—whose reason for attending had previously been unclear—grew longer and longer. And finally, Mr. Kotzebue stood up with a long face and declared that he didn’t need to listen to this any longer! Then he left and never returned. But Fichte was quite glad to be rid of him.

[ 53 ] Yes, given the way Fichte engaged with life in practice—a life he sought to shape as the innermost essence of human existence—he was already able to strike a tone that captured the situation quite directly. Although he lived entirely in the spiritual world, he was not an unworldly idealist; rather, he was a man who drew his strength entirely from within himself and who took what he found within himself—his very essence, rooted in his own being—with the utmost seriousness. That is why, at a certain time, when Napoleon had conquered Prussia and the French were in Berlin, he could not remain in Berlin. He did not want to be in a city that was under French occupation. He went to Königsberg, and later to Copenhagen. He did not return until he was ready to present himself as the German man who set forth the innermost essence of his national character, of what it means to be a people, and of his national nature before his compatriots in the “Addresses to the German Nation.”

[ 54 ] One rightly perceives Fichte as a direct expression of the German national character, as the expression of that which, as a spirit, essentially lives forever in our midst—insofar as we are able to grasp German identity in its spirit—not merely in thought, as was so beautifully expressed by a philosopher who, as a philosopher, was by no means in agreement with Fichte: Robert Zimmermann, who said: “As long as a heart beats in Germany capable of feeling the shame of foreign tyranny, the memory of the brave man will live on—the man who, at the moment of deepest humiliation, amid the ruins of Frederick the Great’s collapsed monarchy, in the midst of French-occupied Berlin, before the very eyes and ears of the enemy, amid spies and informers, set about restoring the strength of the German people—which had been broken from the outside by the sword—from within through the spirit, and, at the very moment when the political existence of that people seemed to have been destroyed forever, undertook to recreate it anew in future generations through the inspiring idea of universal education.” Even if today—and I would like to reiterate this here—we must think quite differently regarding the content of much of what is written in the “Addresses to the German Nation,” indeed, in Fichte’s other writings, that is not what matters. What matters is that we feel the German spirit that flows through its products, and the renewal of the German spirit with regard to its place in the universe, as presented in the “Addresses to the German Nation.” That we feel this as the spirit that is in our midst, and that we grasp it solely through Fichte’s single example, by which he inserted himself—albeit in a way that initially resonated only distantly—into German development. Powerfully and energetically, yet deeply from within, this spirit sought to insert itself into the development of the world. Thus, even as the twilight of his life was fast approaching, Fichte found the opportunity—once again recasting and renewing his entire philosophy of science in the most intimate manner, meditating upon it anew—to present to his Berlin audience in the fall of 1813 what he had grasped as his deepest thoughts. There, once again—captivating the souls of his listeners in the manner described—he turned his gaze to how impossible it is for a human being to penetrate beyond existence and its reality unless they are willing to grasp this existence in the spirit, beyond all sensuality. But to those people who believe they can perceive any true existence in sensory being and in what is shaped solely by sensory being, he addressed these words in the lectures that were among the last Fichte ever delivered: “Their knowledge dissolves into ignorance and empty words; and yet they praise themselves for it and consider it quite right that it should be so. Take seeing, for example: an image of the object is projected onto the retina. An image of the object is also reflected on the calm surface of the water. Does the water’s surface, in our view, therefore see? What, then, is the additional element that must be added between this image and the actual seeing that exists for us but not for the water’s surface? They do not even have the faintest inkling of this, for their understanding does not extend that far.” A special meaning, a new meaning, says Fichte, must be realized within oneself if one wishes to experience that being in the spirit which alone makes all other forms of being comprehensible. “I am, and I am, with all my aims, only in a supersensible world!” This is one of the phrases Fichte himself coined, and it runs like a leitmotif through everything Fichte spoke of throughout his life—a point he reaffirmed, in a different way, once again in that fall of 1813. And what was he speaking of at that time? That people must become aware that, in the way one views things and the world in ordinary life and in ordinary science, one can never get beyond true Being. One must become aware that a supersensible faculty lives within every human being and that the human being can merge into a supersensible world, using this faculty to immerse oneself—as a creator within one’s own “I”—in the creative, weaving world spirit. It is, as Fichte says, as if a sighted person were to enter a world of the blind and try to make the world of colors and forms comprehensible to them, only to have the blind deny its existence. Thus, the materialist—because he lacks the capacity for it—denies the one who knows: “I am, and I am, with all my goals and creations, in the supersensible world.” And so Fichte impressed upon his listeners at that time this existence in the supersensible, this life in the spiritual, this mastery of the supersensible and the sensible, saying:

[ 55 ] “The new sense is therefore the sense of the Spirit; that for which the Spirit is, and absolutely nothing else, and for which even the other—given being—takes on the form of the Spirit and is transformed into it, for which reason being, in its own form, has in fact disappeared.”

[ 56 ] It is a great thing that the confession of the spirit was made in this way within the development of the German spirit, before those who sought to discover what the German people have to say in the highest sense when they speak from the very depths of their being. For it was through Fichte that the German people spoke. And more than for anyone else, it is true of Fichte that the German national spirit, at that stage of development and in the way it was able to speak, spoke to the German people.

[ 57 ] Whether we look at him outwardly—this Fichte—or turn our soulful gaze toward his soul, he always appears to us as the most immediate expression of the German spirit itself, of that which exists within Germanness not merely at any given time, but which is always there; that which, if we only know how to grasp it, is always right in our midst. Precisely because of what Fichte is—how he presents himself to us, in such a way that we have a vivid image of him before our soul—we want to look at him, we want to listen to him in spirit when he creates an atmosphere that spreads between his soul and the souls of his listeners, so that we want to be very close to him: this is what enables us to feel him, I would say, like a legendary hero, like a hero of the spirit, who can always be seen there as a spiritual leader of his people, provided that this people understands him correctly. It can see him by vividly placing him before its soul as one of its greatest heroes of the spirit.

[ 58 ] And today, in this age of action, when the German people must struggle in an unparalleled way for their very being, for their very existence, let the image rise before our souls, before our minds, of the one who was able to portray Germanness—the German essence—from the highest vantage point, yet also in the most forceful, unique way; to portray it in such a way that we can believe in him more than in any other: We have him right here among us, if we understand him correctly. For everything in him is so thoroughly of a single mold, it presents itself so directly, that he stands among us in all his liveliness as we contemplate him; whether a single trait emerges from the totality of his being or whether we allow the most intimate aspects of his soul to take effect upon us, he stands before us as a whole. He cannot be grasped by us in any other way; otherwise, he is grasped in a clumsy, superficial manner. |

[ 59 ] Yes, one can perceive how he kindles the souls within his people to surrender themselves to the forces of existence in the world—creating within the Creator—how he ascends with this soul to the experience in the Spirit, and how he, as Life, becomes part of his people’s evolutionary progress. One need only open the eye of the soul. One will not understand him unless one grasps him in this vivid way. But when one opens the eye of the soul to his greatness as a leader of his people, then he stands right in our midst.

[ 60 ] The way he sought to have an impact differently from other teachers—by standing before his listeners, not speaking, but acting through his words, in such a way that it did not matter to him what he said, because it was meant only to ignite the listener’s own action within their soul, because something was to happen to the soul, something was to be done, and because the souls were to leave the hall different from how they had entered, —this is brought about by the very peculiar fact that he must come alive to us in the way he worked from the people into the people, and that we believe we hear him when he conveys what he has heard in solitary meditations—through which he surely prepared himself for every spoken lecture—and what he has heard in his inner dialogue with the spirit of the world, did not simply present to his listeners, but transformed into the Word, which is deed, so that he sent those to whom he had spoken away as different people. They had become different people, not through his power, but through the awakening and kindling of their own power. If we understand him correctly in this way, then we can believe we hear him clearly as he seeks to seize the spirit directly with his word—with the sharpness, with the sharp blade of his word—the spirit he had previously seized in the soul by seeking, as he himself said, not merely to bring good people into the world but great people through his care for the soul.

[ 61 ] When one truly brings to life who he was, one cannot help but hear his words—words that seem to come from the Spirit itself, which made Fichte merely an instrument through which to speak, to speak from the Spirit of the world itself, inspiring and kindling fire, warmth, and light. His words were full of warmth, and they were driven forward by a sense of moral dignity. Heartfelt sincerity emanated from his words as they flowed through the ears into the souls and hearts of his listeners; moral dignity carried these words out into the world, for with the fire that these words kindled in the souls of his listeners, those listeners—as we so often hear from Fichte’s contemporaries—went out into the world as the most capable men. Open the ear of the spirit, and if one understands Fichte at all, one can hear—as if he were present—the one who speaks from the spirit of his people. And whoever has an ear for such national greatness will hear it right here among us. And rarely will a spirit stand before us in such a way that we can trace everything that he is, down to every single act of life. Do we not already see the duty, the moral world order, as he advocated it at the height of his philosophy, when we observe the boy who, at the age of seven—having developed a love for “Siegfried with the Horns” out of pure inclination—throws it into the water because he feels it is not in accordance with his duties? Do we not already find the pensive man preparing for his lectures—who knows how to direct his mind toward the mysteries of the world—in the boy standing out in the pasture, letting his gaze wander for hours in one direction into the mysteries of nature, until the shepherd comes and leads him home? Do we not sense the very fire that animated Fichte, that animated him from his lectern in Jena, and later, when he addressed the representatives—as he put it—of his entire people in his “Addresses to the German Nation”? Do we not already sense it there, where, by repeating the country pastor’s sermon, he made an impression on Baron von Miltitz? Do we not feel, in every single detail—even in the smallest actions of his life—if we are only capable of a modicum of spiritual sensitivity, that this spirit is very close at hand? Do we not feel how soulfulness, warmth of heart, and moral integrity radiate from this spirit into the entire subsequent course of German development? Do we not sense the eternally living spirit—which lives on even when we may not agree with every detail—in the “Addresses to the German Nation”? Although they were confiscated twice by the censors in 1824, they could not be silenced. They are alive today and must live on in our souls.

[ 62 ] How we can see him, this Fichte, right here among us! How we can hear him, if we truly understand him! We can feel him—if we feel with our souls—how he inspires his listeners, how he inspires the entire German people in their future development, and how what he created—what he allowed to flow forth through the ongoing current of his people’s development—must remain imperishable! We cannot help but feel this spirit of Fichte right here among us, if we truly understand him.