Note 278 — Chapter XVIII · GERMAN FREETHOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES

Compare the complaints of Hurst, Hist. of Rationalism, 3rd ed. pp. 136–37, and of Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, Bohn ed. p. 72. Fichte’s theory, says Coleridge (after praising him as the destroyer of Spinozism), “degenerated into a crude egoismus, a boastful and hyperstoic hostility to Nature, as lifeless, godless, and altogether unholy, while his religion consisted in the assumption of a mere ordo ordinans, which we were permitted exotericé to call God.” Heine (as last cited, p. 75) insists that Fichte’s Idealism is “more Godless than the crassest Materialism.” ↑