ars, teachers of the people or clergy, artists, and government
officials, who work directly on the community of rational beings. Fichte's
thoughtful and sympathetically written discussion of marriage is in
pleasant contrast to the bald, purely legal view of this relation adopted
by Kant.

_Natural right_ is for Fichte, as for Kant, whose theory of right,
moreover, appeared later than Fichte's, entirely independent of ethics,
and distinguished from the latter by its exclusive reference to external
conduct instead of to the disposition and the will. The rule of right gains
from the moral law, it is true, new sanction for conscience, but cannot be
derived from the law.--The concept of right is to be deduced as a necessary
act of the ego, _i.e._, to be shown a condition of self-consciousness. The
ego must posit itself as an individual, and can accomplish this only by
positing itself in a relation of right to other finite rational beings;
without a thou, no I. A finite rational being cannot posit itself without
ascribing to itself a free activity in an external sense-world; and it
cannot effect this latter unless (1) it ascribes free activity to other
beings as well, hence not without assuming other finite rational beings
outside itself, and positing itself as standing in _the relation of right_
to them; and unless (2) it ascribes to itself a material body and posits
this as standing under the influence of a person outside it. But, further,
Fichte considers it possible to deduce the particular constitution both of
the external world and of the human body (as the sphere of all free actions
possible to the person). In the former there must be present a tough,
durable matter capable of resistance, and light and air in order to the
possibility of intercourse between spirits; while the latter must be an
organized, articulated nature-product, furnished with senses, capable of
infinite determination, and adapted to all conceivable motions.

If a community of free beings, such as has been shown the condition of
individual self-consciousness, is to be possible, the following must hold
as the law of right: So limit thy freedom that others may be free along
with thee. This law is conditioned on the lawful behavior of others. Where
this is lacking, where my fellow does not recognize and treat me as a free,
rational being, the right of coercion comes in; coercion, however, is not
to be exercised by the individual himself--since then there