The author of the Wissenschaftslehre was the son of a poor ribbon maker, and was born at Rammenau in Lusatia in 1762.  The talents of the boy induced the Freiherr von Miltiz to give him the advantage of a good education.  Fichte attended school in Meissen and in Pforta, and was a student of theology at the universities of Jena and Leipsic.  While a tutor in Zurich he made the acquaintance of Lavater and Pestalozzi, as well as of his future wife, Johanna Rahn, a niece of Klopstock.  Returning to Leipsic, his whole mode of thought was revolutionized by the Kantian philosophy, in which it was his duty to instruct a pupil.  This gives to the mind, as his letters confess, an inconceivable elevation above all earthly things.  “I have adopted a nobler morality, and, instead of occupying myself with things without me, have been occupied more with myself.”  “I now believe with all my heart in human freedom, and am convinced that only on this supposition duty and virtue of any kind are possible.”  “I live in a new world since I have read the Critique of Practical Reason.  Things which I believed never could be proved to me, e.g., the idea of an absolute freedom and duty, have been proved, and I feel the happier for it.  It is inconceivable what reverence for humanity, what power this philosophy gives us, what a blessing it is for an age in which the citadels of morality had been destroyed, and the idea of duty blotted out from all the dictionaries!” A journey to Warsaw, whither he had been attracted by the expectation of securing a position as a private tutor, soon afforded him the opportunity of visiting at Koenigsberg the author of the system which had effected so radical a transformation in his convictions.  His rapidly written treatise, Essay toward a Critique of All Revelation, attained the end to which its inception was due by gaining for its author a favorable reception from the honored master.  Kant secured for Fichte a tutor’s position in Dantzic, and a publisher for his maiden work.  When this appeared, at Easter, 1792, the name of its author was by oversight omitted from the title page, together with the preface, which had been furnished after the rest of the book; and as the anonymous work was universally ascribed to Kant (whose religious philosophy was at this time eagerly looked for), the young writer became famous at a stroke as soon as the error was explained.  A second edition was issued as early as the following year.

After his marriage in Zurich, where he had completed several political treatises (the address, Reclamation of the Freedom of Thought from the Princes of Europe, who have hitherto suppressed it, Heliopolis in the Last Year of the Old Darkness, and the two Hefte, Contributions toward the Correction of the Public Judgment on the French Revolution, 1793), Fichte accepted, in 1794, a call to Jena, in place of Reinhold, who had gone to Kiel, and whose popularity was soon exceeded by his own.  The same year saw the birth