Johann Gottlieb Fichte was born in Ramenau, Oberlausitz, May 19, 1762, the son of a poor weaver.  Through the generosity of a nobleman, the gifted lad was enabled to follow his intellectual bent; after attending the schools at Meissen and Schulpforta he studied theology at the universities of Jena, Leipzig, and Wittenberg with the purpose of entering the ministry.  His poverty frequently compelled him to interrupt his studies by accepting private tutorships in families, so that he never succeeded in preparing him self for the examinations.  In 1790 he became acquainted with Kant’s philosophy, which two students had asked him to expound to them, and to which he now devoted himself with feverish zeal.  It revolutionized his entire mode of thought and determined the course of his life.  The anonymous publication of his book, Attempt at a Critique of all Revelation, in 1792, written from the Kantian point of view and mistaken at first for a work of the great criticist, won him fame and a professorship at Jena (1794).  Here, in the intellectual centre of Germany, Fichte became the eloquent exponent of the new idealism, which aimed at the reform of life as well as of Wissenschaft; he not only taught philosophy, but preached it, as Kuno Fischer has aptly said.  During the Jena period he laid the foundations for his “Science of Knowledge” (Wissenschaftslehre) which he presented in numerous works:  The Conception of the Science of Knowledge, 1794; The Foundation of the Entire Science of Knowledge, 1794; The Foundation of Natural Rights, 1796; The System of Ethics, 1798—­(all these translated by Kroeger); the two Introductions to the Science of Knowledge, 1797 (trans. by Kroeger in Journal of Speculative Philosophy).  The appearance of an article Concerning the Ground of our Belief in a Divine World-Order, 1798, in which Fichte seemed to identify God with the moral world-order, brought down upon him the charge of atheism, against which he vigorously defended himself in his Appeal to the Public and a series of other writings.  Full of indignation over the attitude which his government assumed in the matter, be offered his resignation (1799) and removed to Berlin, where he presented his philosophical notions in popular public lectures and in writings which were characterized by clearness, force, and moral earnestness rather than by their systematic form.  There appeared:  The Vocation of Man, 1800 (translated by Dr. Smith); A Sun-Clear Statement concerning the Nature of the New Philosophy, 1801 (trans. by Kroeger in Journal of Speculative Philosophy); The Nature of the Scholar, 1806 (trans. by Smith); Characteristics of the Present Age, 1806 (trans. by Smith); The Way towards the Blessed Life, 1806 (trans. by Smith).  After the overthrow of Prussia by Napoleon, in 1806, Fichte fled from Berlin to Koenigsberg and Sweden, but returned when peace was declared in 1807, and delivered his celebrated Addresses to the German Nation, 1807-08, in which he sought to arouse the German people to a consciousness of their national mission and their duty even while the French army was still occupying the Prussian capital.