independent. To this
formal and universal norm, again, there is added a special injunction for
each individual. Each individual spirit has its definite mission assigned
to it by the world-order: each ought to do that which it alone should and
can do. Always fulfill thy moral vocation, thy special destination.[1] Or
both in popular combination: Never act contrary to conscience.

[Footnote 1: Although Fichte was justly charged with surpassing even the
abstractness of the Kantian ethics with his bald moral principle, the
self-dependence of the ego, he deserves praise for having given ethics a
concrete content of indisputable soundness and utility by his introduction
of Jacobi's idea of purified individuality.]

The elevation to freedom is accomplished gradually. At first freedom
consists only in the consciousness of the natural impulse, then follows
a breaking away from this by means of maxims, which in the beginning
are maxims of individual happiness. Later on a blind enthusiasm for
self-dependence arises and produces an heroic spirit, which would rather be
generous than just, which bestows sympathy more readily than respect; true
morality, however, does not arise until, with constant attention to the law
and continued watchfulness of self, duty is done for its own sake. No man
is for a moment secure of his morality without continued endeavor. In order
to deliverance from the original sin of inertness and its train, cowardice
and falsity, men stand in need of examples, such as have been given them in
the founders of religions, to construe for them the riddle of freedom. The
necessary enlightenment concerning moral conviction is given by the Church,
whose symbols are not to be looked upon as dogmatic propositions, but only
as means for the proclamation of the eternal verities, and which, like the
state (for both are institutions based on necessity), has for its object to
make itself unnecessary as time goes on.

The system of duties distinguishes four classes of duties on the basis
of the twofold opposition of universal (non-transferable) and particular
(transferable) duties, and of unconditional duties (directed to the whole)
and conditional duties (directed toward self). These four classes are the
duties of self-preservation, of class, of non-interference with others,
and of vocation. The lower calling includes the producers, artisans, and
tradesmen, whose action terminates directly on nature; and the higher,
the schol