ART. XII. Grundzüge des gegenwärhgen Zeitalters, &c. i. e. The principal Features of the present Age. By J. G. FICHTE. 8vo Berlin. 186.

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HIS publication contains seventeen lectures delivered by M. FICHTE during the winter of 1804-5 at Berlin, but to what description of audience we are not apprized; though that information, and an account of the success which he experienced, would have been acceptable, as indicating how far such inquiries as are here instituted can be understood and relished by the inhabitants of Berlin. Those who expected, as the title would lead us to anticipate, the result of the experi ence and observations of a man distinguished for his genius and originality of ideas, and who wished to know in what light his age and his contemporaries appeared to him, must have felt the same disappointment which we have experienced. The writer is one of those heroes of modern German philosophy, who, during the last twenty years, have endeavoured to give a new form to all the sciences; or rather have pretended to be the first that actually founded a real science. For a while, he excited considerable attention: but the applause, which he gained by the singular productions of his undoubted genius, was much less than he expected; and since he was actually persecuted and driven from the university of Jena, on account of some of his philosophical principles, he seems to have considered his age and his contemporaries in a very gloomy light: for to his disappointments, and to a proud disgust, we in a great measure ascribe the tenor of the lectures before us, though they profess to have no connection with the experience of the author or any other person. To relate and to reason on actual facts, to describe any age or period of time from observation, M. FICHTE supposes to be the province of an annalist; while the philosopher forms and writes a history of mankind à priori; and then only suffers experience to determine with which period of the history, that is to possess all the certainty of abstract sciences, a particular age may agree. It is on this principle that he proposes to characterize the present age.

We do not mean to follow the lecturer through the labyrinths of his reasoning, since we conceive that we shall fulfil our duty to our readers, and consult their comfort as well as our own, if we make them acquainted only with the general tenor of his inquiries. Indeed, as we are not initiated in the mysteries of his philosophy, we should often be incapable of communicating his sentiments in all their transcendant purity. He places himself on an elevation much beyond his contemporaries, viz. on the throne of the science which he considers as

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his creation, the pure science of reason, which is to give principles to and guide our inquiries in all inferior sciences. We suppose that, on that high station, every thing appears in a different light from that in which we who belong to the crowd below, are enabled to behold it; and we must therefore ascribe it to our ignorance, if we are not capable of comprehending even the author's popular discussions, where they go back to first principles. This at least is evident, that he wishes to establish a system of idealism, though he seems not to tread in the footsteps of Berkeley.

As M. FICHTE takes a circuitous route in his inquiries, we are presented with his views of avariety of general subjects; such as the nature and true origin of civil society; the real value and purport of Christianity, and the true tenor of it; the history of mankind, &c. He proceeds on a principle derived as a postulate from his higher philosophy, or pure science of reason, where its truth is said to be proved as absolutely necessary, which he thus expresses:-the purpose of the terrestrial life of mankind, as a species, is to regulate during that life all their relations with free will, according to the dictates of reason;-and from this principle he infers that there must necessarily be five periods in the progress of mankind. During the first, reason governs man as instinct, or he is in a state of innocence; in the second, that instinct is changed into an external authority, by which the government of reason is supported; the third struggles against that authority, and all authority, and produces the age of indifference to truth, and of complete licentiousness; in the fourth, truth is esteemed and loved as the highest good, which is the age of commencing justification; and, in the fifth, man elevates himself to become a pure impression of reason, and enters on the age of accomplished justification. Through these periods, the human species must pass but the most civilized nations are always to be considered as forming the criterion of the age, and individuals may be advanced to a new period, while their contemporaries are still in the preceding stage. The lecturer clearly insinuates that he considers, himself as advanced much before the age in which he lives which, in his opinion, is passing through the third period, or the middle between the blind reign of reason, and the enlightened reign of reason, and therefore is in a sort of intellectual and moral anarchy. Egotism, and consequently vice, are the leading features of the age in which men will acknowlege that only to be true which they can comprehend consistently with common sense, and that only to be binding which promotes their own interest.

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Pursuing

Pursuing, then, the deductions in his own way, the lecturer discovers that the third period is also the age of writers and scribblers, and of a rage for superficial reading and judging; and even literary Reviews are placed among the necessary phanomena of the period. Whenever this philosopher descends from his height of abstraction and technical language, we listen to him with profit and pleasure, though it is not on many points that we can agree with him. Thus his remarks on the prevailing cacoethes scribendi et legendi, its causes and effects, and the episode in the sixth lecture on the art of reading, contain many important truths and good advice: but we allude particularly to his inquiries into the nature and progress of civil society, the formation of states, and the relation of their members and subjects to each other. Though a great part of these discussions is abstract, they are not useless, nor are they communicated in language which will be unintelligible to the uninitiated. M. FICHTE commences by describing what he calls the pure form of a state, which he defines to be, the direction of all the powers of individuals to the end or purpose of the whole species, or, which in a state is the same thing, of all its members. He then shews in how many different ways this may be effected, and how personal, civil, and political liberty may be secured; elucidating his remarks by a retrospect of history into which, however, he carries his favorite system, viewing facts constantly through the medium of a philosophy which may be called an ideai Spinozism.

Respecting religion and Christianity, the author seems to entertain very singular ideas. In and through it, he says, man is led to the highest degree of perfection: but we can no where find a clear statement of the signification which he assigns to the term religion, and which is evidently not such as is commonly attached to it. Christianity, in his opinion, has never yet appeared publicly in all its purity, and as yet has only begun to act its part: but the present age is on the point of divesting itself of the superstition which has hitherto vented its true spirit from appearing, and to realize the effects which it is intended to produce.

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We are fully aware that we can convey only a very imperfect idea of M. FICHTE's turn of thinking: but our apology rests partly on our own inability to penetrate the depths of his philosophy; partly on the nature of his reasoning, which renders an abstract peculiarly difficult; and partly on the technical language which he employs, and which is not easi ly to be exchanged for other and particularly foreign terms. In order to afford some idea of this philosopher's manner, we

give the translation of a short passage, as faithful as we can make it, from the introduction to an inquiry into the nature of history:

Whatever really exists, exists absolutely and necessarily; and it exists necessarily such as it is; it could neither not exist, nor exist otherwise. In whatever truly exists, therefore, no beginning or changeableness, no voluntary cause, is possible.-The One, truly existing, and existing absolutely through itself, is what all languages call God. The existence of God is not the cause or reason of knowlege, so that they might be separated from each other, but it is absolutely knowlege itself: his existence, or the knowlege, is entirely one and the same thing; in knowlege he exists absolutely as he is in himself, as a power absolutely resting on itself; and to say that he exists absolutely, or that knowlege exists absolutely, is saying one and the same thing-A world only exists in knowlege; and knowlege itself is the world: the world is therefore mediately, and through knowlege, the divine Being itself. If, then, any one should say that the world might also not exist, that it once did not exist, and had been made by a voluntary act of the Deity, it is the same as if he said: God might not exist, and had once not existed: but by a voluntary act, which he might also have omitted, be resolved to exist. This existence, of which we have just been speaking, is the absolute existence without time; and whatever is placed in that existence can be known à priori only in the world of pure thought; it is unchangeable at all times.'

We imagine that our readers will not desire farther specimens of this production, nor a more copious view of its contents. Indeed, we are disposed to regret the time which we have devoted to the perusal of it; and even after having taken this trouble, we should almost have been inclined to conceal the scanty fruits of our toil, but that we consider the present communication of them as useful in warning others against similar disappointment.

ART. XIII. Geist der Zeit, &c. i e. The Spirit of the Times, by ERNEST MORITZ ARNDT. 12mo. 1806.

TH 'HE method which M. ARNDT pursues, in the delineation of his age and cotemporaries, is almost diametrically opposite to that of M. Fichte, in the work which we have announced in the preceding article. While the latter pretends to divest himself of all personal impressions that the world might have made on him, and to pronounce truths as undemiable as the dictates of reason, the former professes not to offer any thing more than the views and opinions of an individual: his intention in writing is to give vent to his feelings, to convey to others the impressions which times and men

have left on his mind, and to lay before the public the fears and hopes of a heart warmly interested in the state of his own species, desirous of leading them to a consciousness of their real situation, and longing to kindle in others the flame which warms his own bosom. He speaks and reasons on actual facts alone, on himself and on mankind around him, and looks back into past times merely for the sake of a comparison with the present. Equally avoiding flattery and invectives, he says only what he feels, but, on important subjects, says all that he feels; not desiring to render any truth palatable to the world by an artificial garb. Inspired by the example of the worthies of former ages, whom their cotemporaries hated and persecuted, but whom posterity reveres for their undaunted love of truth, he throws down the gauntlet to all those who endeavour to suppress light, and to deceive mankind.

Such are the tone and tenor of this writer's professions, the sincerity of which we see no reason to doubt. He has, at least, faithfully adhered to his promise of a frank confession of his sentiments; he by no means avoids those subjects on which it is now scarcely safe in Germany to speak or write the truth; and he betrays no symptom cf interested partyspirit.

We do not, however, find M. ARNDT's sentiments, and his manner of stating them, so praiseworthy as we believe his intentions to be. He is, as we know from several other publications which have proceeded from his pen, possessed of a very lively imagination, and ardent feelings; and he betrays a considerable degree of affectation of strength and originality in his way of expressing himself. By the former, he has been led in the work before us to many exaggerations and gloomy views of things, and sometimes to great aberrations from his main subject; while the latter seduces him into much less plain and dignified language, than he who assumes the office of the monitor of his age, and addresses in particular the enlightened part of the community, ought to adopt. Thus, by blaming every thing, he renders his correction unimpressive; and by laying the dark colours too strongly on his picture, he makes the features indistinct. His complaints are. directed against his age in a variety of views; and he objects to the literary, political, and moral qualities of his cotemporaries. The justice of many of his observations is undeniable, particularly with regard to his native country. Thus he censures with very great propriety the rage for proposing new systems, the separation of literary men from active life, and their desire of seeming to know every thing; and he points out the superficiality, the loss of respect for the learned, and

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