me, however, whether, as modern idealist, I myself accept Fichte’s statemnent as the final truth of the doctrine, I respond of course at once that I do not. This isn’t the idealism that has, as idealism ought to have, a deep and genuine respect for the natural order and for experience. Fichte’s easy disposal of the whole external and natural order is, indeed, not only bold, but quite unwarranted. The modern student of nervous physiology, of the facts of evolution, and of the interdependence of the physical and moral worlds generally, is not likely to find Fichte’s “ethical idealism” anywhere near to the last word. More philosophical surprises await us hereafter; upon newer insights the thought of to-day is based; and in some, not in all respects, the whole later German idealistic movement, which Fichte began, represents to my mind, as you will later see, a circuit to one side of the main stream of modern thought. Only, as we shall learn, from this circuit thought returns enriched. This experience also will have its part in the outcome; and he who has not once fairly viewed Fichte’s universe will see less than he ought to see in the universe of to-day.
As an experience, then, as one more of the many ways of looking at truth, I want you to consider this doctrine. Think of Fichte, when you read or hear of him, as one embodiment only of that beautiful, that profoundly wise and instructive, waywardness of German thought and sentiment, which we all know so well to-day in song, in story, and in the drama, as well as in the other arts. It is this same waywardness that has given us “Faust,” and Heine’s “Buch der Lieder;” that instantaneously transforms the whole universe for us in any song of Schubert’s or of Schumann’s; that builds worlds and casts them down in fiery despair in a Wagnerian trilogy. In presence of this waywardness, not, indeed, of the Germany of Bismarck and of the two Williams, but of the now almost dead romantic Germany, whose empire, as Jean
