Kant’s considerations on historical development are an appendix to his philosophy; they are not a necessary part, wrought into the woof of his system.  It was otherwise with his successors the Idealists, for whom his system was the point of departure, though they rejected its essential feature, the limitation of human thought.  With Fichte and Hegel progressive development was directly deduced from their principles.  If their particular interpretations of history have no permanent value, it is significant that, in their ambitious attempts to explain the universe a priori, history was conceived as progressive, and their philosophies did much to reinforce a conception which on very different principles was making its way in the world.  But the progress which their systems involved was not bound up with the interest of human happiness, but stood out as a fact which, whether agreeable or not, is a consequence of the nature of thought.

The process of the universe, as it appeared to Fichte, [Footnote:  Fichte’s philosophy of history will be found in Die Grundzuge des gegenwartigen Zeitalters (1806), lectures which he delivered at Berlin in 1804-5.] tends to a full realisation of “freedom”; that is its end and goal, but a goal that always recedes.  It can never be reached; for its full attainment would mean the complete suppression of Nature.  The process of the world, therefore, consists in an indefinite approximation to an unattainable ideal:  freedom is being perpetually realised more and more; and the world, as it ascends in this direction, becomes more and more a realm of reason.

What Fichte means by freedom may be best explained by its opposition to instinct.  A man acting instinctively may be acting quite reasonably, in a way which any one fully conscious of all the implications and consequences of the action would judge to be reasonable.  But in order that his actions should be free he must himself be fully conscious of all those implications and consequences.

It follows that the end of mankind upon earth is to reach a state in which all the relations of life shall be ordered according to reason, not instinctively but with full consciousness and deliberate purpose.  This end should govern the ethical rules of conduct, and it determines the necessary stages of history.

It gives us at once two main periods, the earliest and the latest:  the earliest, in which men act reasonably by instinct, and the latest, in which they are conscious of reason and try to realise it fully.  But before reaching this final stage they must pass through an epoch in which reason is conscious of itself, but not regnant.  And to reach this they must have emancipated themselves from instinct, and this process of emancipation means a fourth epoch.  But they could not have wanted to emancipate themselves unless they had felt instinct as a servitude imposed by an external authority, and therefore we have to distinguish yet another epoch wherein reason is expressed