Zimmer on his
philosophy of religion. Among foreign works we may note Adamson's _Fichte_,
1881, and the English translations of several of Fichte's works by Kroeger
[_Science of Knowledge_, 1868; _Science of Rights_, 1869--both also, 1889]
and William Smith [_Popular Writings_, 4th ed., 1889; also Everett's
_Fichte's Science of Knowledge_ (Griggs's Philosophical Classics, 1884),
and several translations in the _Journal of Speculative Philosophy_,
including one of _The Facts of Consciousness_.--TR.]]

%1. The Science of Knowledge.%

%(a) The Problem.%--In Fichte's judgment Kant did not succeed in carrying
through the transformation in thought which it was his aim to effect,
because the age did not understand the spirit of his philosophy. This
spirit, and with it the great service of Kant, consists in _transcendental
idealism_, which by the doctrine that objects conform themselves to
representations, not representations to objects, draws philosophy away from
external objects and leads it back into ourselves. We have followed the
letter, he thinks, instead of the spirit of Kant, and because of a few
passages with a dogmatic ring, whose references to a given matter, the
thing in itself, and the like, were intended only as preliminary, have
overlooked the numberless others in which the contrary is distinctly
maintained. Thus the interpreters of Kant, using their own prejudices as a
criterion, have read into him exactly that which he sought to refute, and
have made the destroyer of all dogmatism himself a dogmatist; thus in the
Kantianism of the Kantians there has sprung up a marvelous combination of
crude dogmatism and uncompromising idealism. Though such an absurd
mingling of entirely heterogeneous elements may be excused in the case of
interpreters and successors, who have had to construct for themselves the
guiding principle of the whole from their study of the critical writings,
yet we cannot assume it in the author of the system, unless we believe the
_Critique of Pure Reason_ the result of the strangest chance, and not the
work of intellect. Two men only, Beck, the teacher of the Standpoint, and
Jacobi, the clearest mind of the century, are to be mentioned with respect
as having risen above the confusion of the time to the perception that Kant
teaches idealism, that, according to him, the object is not given, but
made.

Besides the perspicuity which would have prevented these misunderstandings,
Fichte misses somet