ABSTRACT
EcoNOMISTS of the school of Adam Smith have been often blamed for putting wealth instead of man in the forefront of their inquiries. Fichte goes farther than most of these critics. In his essay on the Dignity of Man (1794) he puts the Ego in the centre of all philosophy, and explains that by the Ego he means the Man.1 It is the conception of a self-conscious spirit, or Man, that first shows to us that the world is a cosmos, and (he considers) theremark is true not only speculatively but practically and physically. " Man makes raw materials organize themselves after his ideal ; he tames the wild animals and domesticates the wild plants." Science, first awakened by hard necessity, gradually knows and subdues Nature (Destiny of Man, r8oo). 2 Men in company with men become more truly human, and human society reveals and developes the true nature of humanity. Though all outward embodiments of his ideal decay, the ideal itself remains, ever tending to transform the material world to its own likeness, and it remains an elevating feature in the lowest forms of humanity ; the down-trodden slave on an American plantation is a temple of the Holy Ghost.3
