likewise acquired important ideas and experiences, so the significance of German idealism must not be estimated alone by the results of its keen speculation. The fact is indeed patent, that profound ideas neither stand nor fall with the demonstration which men seek to give them. The kernel may persist even though the husk decays. The persistence of values is no more identical with the persistence of certain special forms in the realm of thought than in the realm of energy.
A. The Speculative Systems
1. John Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), the son of a Saxon peasant, took an enthusiastic interest, during his school period, in the spiritual struggles of Lessing, and later, after struggling with extreme poverty during his university life, was led to philosophy by the writings of Kant. His service at the University of Jena met with great success, not only because of his intellectual keenness and his eloquence, but likewise on account of the impression made by his moral earnestness. Having been dismissed on account of his religious views he went to Berlin, where he afterwards received an appointment. He takes first rank among those who, in the disastrous period following the battle of Jena, labored for the preservation of the sentiment of patriotism and of hope, especially by his Addresses to the German Nation, delivered during the winter of 1808-9, while Berlin was still in the hands of the French.
a. Fichte’s philosophy is inspired by the criticism of the Kantian theory of the thing-in-itself in which Jacobi, Schulze and Maimon were already engaged. The motives at the root of Fichte’s reflections however were not purely theoretical. Action constituted his profoundest motive
