of the Wissenschaftslehre.  His stay in Jena was embittered by conflicts with the clergy, who took offense at his ethical lectures (On the Vocation of the Scholar) held on Sunday mornings (though not at an hour which interfered with church service), and with the students, who, after they had been untrue to their decision—­which they had formed as a result of these lectures—­to dissolve their societies or orders, gave vent to their spite by repeatedly smashing the windows of Fichte’s residence.  Accordingly he took leave of absence, and spent the summer of 1795 in Osmannstaedt.  The years 1796-98, in which, besides the two Introductions to the Science of Knowledge, the Natural Right and the Science of Ethics (one of the most all important works in German philosophical literature) appeared, mark the culmination of Fichte’s famous labors.  The so-called atheistic controversy[1] resulted in Fichte’s departure from Jena.  The Philosophisches Journal, which since 1797 had been edited by Fichte in association with Niethammer, had published an article by Magister Forberg, rector at Saalfeld, entitled “The Development of the Concept of Religion,” and as a conciliating introduction to this a short essay by Fichte, “On the Ground of our Belief in a Divine Government of the World."[2] For this it was confiscated by the Dresden government on the charge of containing atheistical matter, while other courts were summoned to take like action.  In Weimar hopes were entertained of an amicable adjustment of the matter.  But when Fichte, after publishing two vindications[3] couched in vehement language, had in a private letter uttered the threat that he would answer with his resignation any censure proceeding from the University Senate, not only was censure for indiscretion actually imposed, but his (threatened) resignation accepted.

[Footnote 1:  Cf.  Karl August Hase, Jenaisches Fichtebuechlein, 1856.]

[Footnote 2:  It is a mistake, Fichte writes here, referring to the conclusion of Forberg’s article ("Is there a God?  It is and remains uncertain,” etc.), to say that it is doubtful whether there is a God or not.  That there is a moral order of the world, which assigns to each rational individual his determined place and counts on his work, is most certain, nay, it is the ground of all other certitude.  The living and operative moral order (ordo ordinans) is itself God; we need no other God, and can conceive no other.  There is no ground in reason for going beyond this world order to postulate a particular being as its cause.  Whoever ascribes personality and consciousness to this particular being makes it finite; consciousness belongs only to the individual, limited ego.  And it is allowable to state this frankly and to beat down the prattle of the schools, in order that the true religion of joyous well-doing may lift up its head.]

[Footnote 3:  Appeal to the Public, and Formal Defense against the Charge of Atheism, 1799.  The first of these maintains that Fichte’s standpoint and that of his opponents are related as duty and advantage, sensible and suprasensible, and that the substantial God of his accusers, to be derived from the sensibility, is, as personified fate, as the distributer of all happiness and unhappiness to finite beings, a miserable fetich.]