the 'theatre' to that of the 'market-place' and the pulpit, to adorn it with a wealth of passionate imagery and to apply it to the conditions of his own time and his own country. To this task he devoted all the powers of his genius; and the result was to give the doctrine a popularity which Fichte himself could hardly have foreseen. No doubt, the work of Carlyle was aided by circumstances. But the circumstances also, no less than the doctrine which they were taken to illustrate, were furnished, appropriately enough, by Germany. And if, in a country where conditions were favourable, a man of 'blood and iron' had not arisen to put Carlyle's theories into action, it may be doubted whether they would ever have won the hearing which, for some years, they enjoyed. In another, and far more offensive, form they have come to life again in our own day. And the doctrine of the Uebermensch, the superior person, has not even the merit of originality. But it would be the grossest injustice to hold either Carlyle, or his master, responsible for the sophistries of Nietzsche.
Carlyle was not slow to acknowledge the debt he owed to Fichte. Of no man, with the possible exception of Goethe, has he spoken with such warmth, or with a glow of sincerity so unmistakable. Here are his words, as they stand in the first writing which gave any true notion of his powers: 'Above all, the "mysticism" of Fichte might astonish us. The cold, colossal, adamantine spirit, standing erect and clear, like a Cato Major among degenerate men; fit to have been the teacher of the Stoa, and to have discoursed of Beauty and Virtue in the groves of Academe! Our reader has seen some words of Fichte: are those like words of a mystic?[1] We state Fichte's character, as it is known and admitted by men of all parties among the Germans, when we say that so robust an intellect, a soul so calm, so lofty, so massive and immovable, has not mingled
- ↑ They are the words quoted on p. 188.
