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  | title = Life and Death

  | title = Life and Death

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Such are the concluding passages of Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s ''Vocation of Man. ''They are not the words of a religious enthusiast, giving passionate expression to hopes unjustified by science; but they embody results arrived at by profound philosophical thought. This is transcendental idealism—a system which in the hands of Fichte far excelled in metaphysical completeness and coherence the speculations of Berkeley, which are so well and accurately sketched by Mr. St. George Stock in the last number of ''The Spiritualist. ''The identity of subject and object, the necessary evolution of the latter—the world, from the former—the mind of man, and the latter as the existential manifestation of the one life—God; the meaning of freedom, the fact of ''individual ''immortality, the essential nothingness of matter and- the sensuous life—all these are propositions connected together by a chain of necessary thought, requiring indeed the deepest and most sustained attention from the student, but which once clearly and thoroughly apprehended are seen to possess a demonstrative force. We see in ''spirit ''“the promise and potency of every form of terrestrial life,” and of all other life.

Such are the concluding passages of Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s ''Vocation of Man. ''They are not the words of a religious enthusiast, giving passionate expression to hopes unjustified by science; but they embody results arrived at by profound philosophical thought. This is transcendental idealism—a system which in the hands of Fichte far excelled in metaphysical completeness and coherence the speculations of Berkeley, which are so well and accurately sketched by Mr. St. George Stock in the last number of ''The Spiritualist. ''The identity of subject and object, the necessary evolution of the latter—the world, from the former—the mind of man, and the latter as the existential manifestation of the one life—God; the meaning of freedom, the fact of ''individual ''immortality, the essential nothingness of matter and- the sensuous life—all these are propositions connected together by a chain of necessary thought, requiring indeed the deepest and most sustained attention from the student, but which once clearly and thoroughly apprehended are seen to possess a demonstrative force. We see in ''spirit ''“the promise and potency of every form of terrestrial life,” and of all other life.

{{Style P-Signature in capitals| C.C. M.}}

{{Style P-Signature in capitals| C.C.M.}}