Addresses are of the utmost importance, and fully justify Seeley’s reference[1] to them as “the prophetical or canonical book which announces and explains a great transition in modern Europe and the prophecies of which began to be fulfilled immediately after its publication.” They certainly mark a definite stage in the political evolution of modern Germany, for in them Fichte appears as one of the founders of a united Germany, and from them date the regeneration of Prussia and the awakening of a national spirit in Germany. They mark, too, an epoch in the history of the world, for they show Fichte as an apostle of the gospel of liberty, and proclaim that principle of nationality which had far-reaching effects on the political development of Europe in the nineteenth century.
Nor is it possible here to do justice to their tremendous effect on the development of education in Germany. Stein was certainly influenced, especially by those Addresses which deal mainly with education; he became an ardent advocate of the reforms urged by Fichte, as the educational schemes of his ministry testify. That part of his political testament which concerns itself with education seems also to have been inspired by Fichte’s influence.[2] More important still, however, is the fact that the Addresses influenced Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose ideas and plans for German education were carried into effect in 1809 and 1810, and who selected Fichte to be Professor of Philosophy in the new University of Berlin in 1810. Humboldt’s work laid the real foundations of modern German education, and it would be interesting to show how Fichte’s ideas helped to mould that education in its origins and subsequent development.
It is not just because of their great significance in
