philosophy of Fichte attaches itself, by a kind of natural necessity, to that of Kant, of which it is an extension and development, and in relation to which it has its special significance. The difficulties in the way of obtaining a summary view of its nature and tendency are thus, for the general reader, increased. From the peculiar form of the system, it is not at all possible to effect an easy entrance into it; but the closeness of its connection with the Kantian philosophy renders it necessary not only that the reader should become acquainted with the specific character of the critical method, with the point of view from which the problems of speculative thought are regarded in all later German systems, but also that he should have a sufficient grasp of the details of the critical philosophy to appreciate what is peculiar in Fichte’s advance upon it. Of these fundamental requisites for comprehension of Fichte’s doctrine, the first is the more important,—even, one may say, the more essential. The English student who has been accustomed to the analytical and psychological method of Berkeley, or Hume, or Mill, or even to the more developed forms of recent realistic or scientific thinking, as in Spencer, finds himself, as it were, in a new world, when he is brought into contact with the Kantian and post-Kantian speculations—a world in which at first sight all appears to be inverted or reversed. Apparent inversion, as we know, may arise either from the position of the things themselves, or from the inverted view of the observer; and the extraordinary difference between the English and the later German philosophy is merely the result of the fundamental difference in point of view from which they contemplate philosophical questions. The problems with which both are engaged are of necessity the same—no philosophy is ever new—but the methods employed are radically divergent, and not without careful analysis and criticism can they be brought within sight of one another. It is indispensable, in attempting to give a systematic account of one phase of German speculation, that we should endeavour to make clear the characteristic feature which distinguishes that mode of thought, and we can hardly do so without comparing it to some extent with the prevailing type of English philosophy. So soon as the point of view and method of treatment have become clear, we are in a position to consider the problems to which the speculative method must be applied, and thus to obtain a preliminary outline or general conception of the whole system. This, in the first instance, is what we propose to undertake, leaving to the more detailed account of the system the second introductory subject—the contents or results of the Kantian philosophy.