s Fichte now
prefers to say, knowledge) an image of God, the world an image of the
spirit." The active order of the world (the moral law which realizes
itself in individuals) the immediate, and objective reality the mediate,
revelation of the absolute!

Does this view of religion, which Fichte incorporates also in the later
expositions of the Science of Knowledge, indicate an abandonment and denial
of the earlier standpoint? The philosophy of Fichte's second period is a
new system--so judge the majority of the historians of philosophy. It is
not a transformation, but a completion of the earlier system; the doctrine
promulgated in Berlin continues to be idealistic, as that advanced in Jena
had itself been pantheistic--this is the opinion of Fortlage and Harms,
in agreement with the philosopher himself and with his son. Kuno Fischer,
also, who shows a constant advance in the development of Fichteanism, a
gradual transition "without a break," may be counted among the minority who
hold that throughout his life Fichte taught but one system. We believe it
our duty to adhere to this latter view. The Science of Knowledge (the world
a product of the ego) enters as it is into the later form of the Fichtean
philosophy; the latter gives up none of the fundamental positions of the
former, but only adds to it a culmination, by which the appearance of
the building is altered, it is true, but not the edifice itself. In the
discussion of the question the following three have been emphasized as
the most important points of distinction between the two periods: In the
earlier system God is made equivalent to the absolute ego and the moral
order of the world, in the later he is separated from these and removed
beyond them; in the former the nature of God is described as activity,
in the latter, as being; in the one, action is designated as the highest
mission of man, in the other, blessed devotion to God. All three variations
of the later doctrine from the earlier may be admitted without giving up
the position that the former is only an extension of the latter and not
an essential modification of it (_i.e._, in its teachings concerning the
relation of the ego and the world). Fichte experienced religious feelings
the philosophical outcome of which he worked into his system. He now knows
a first thing (the Deity as distinct from the absolute ego) and a last
thing (the inwardness of religious devotion to the world-ground), which he
had before n