ichte's philosophy of history will be found in Die Grundzuge des
gegenwartigen Zeitalters (1806), lectures which he delivered at Berlin
in 1804-5.] tends to a full realisation of "freedom"; that is its end
and goal, but a goal that always recedes. It can never be reached; for
its full attainment would mean the complete suppression of Nature. The
process of the world, therefore, consists in an indefinite approximation
to an unattainable ideal: freedom is being perpetually realised more and
more; and the world, as it ascends in this direction, becomes more and
more a realm of reason.

What Fichte means by freedom may be best explained by its opposition to
instinct. A man acting instinctively may be acting quite reasonably,
in a way which any one fully conscious of all the implications and
consequences of the action would judge to be reasonable. But in order
that his actions should be free he must himself be fully conscious of
all those implications and consequences.

It follows that the end of mankind upon earth is to reach a state in
which all the relations of life shall be ordered according to reason,
not instinctively but with full consciousness and deliberate purpose.
This end should govern the ethical rules of conduct, and it determines
the necessary stages of history.

It gives us at once two main periods, the earliest and the latest: the
earliest, in which men act reasonably by instinct, and the latest, in
which they are conscious of reason and try to realise it fully. But
before reaching this final stage they must pass through an epoch in
which reason is conscious of itself, but not regnant. And to reach this
they must have emancipated themselves from instinct, and this process
of emancipation means a fourth epoch. But they could not have wanted
to emancipate themselves unless they had felt instinct as a servitude
imposed by an external authority, and therefore we have to distinguish
yet another epoch wherein reason is expressed in authoritarian
institutions to which men blindly submit. In this way Fichte deduces
five historical epochs: two in which progress is blind, two in which it
is free, and an intermediate in which it is struggling to consciousness.
[Footnote: First Epoch: that of instinctive reason; the age of
innocence. Second: that of authoritarian reason. Third: that of
enfranchisement; the age of scepticism and unregulated liberty. Fourth:
that of conscious reason, as science. Fifth: that of regnant r