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The success of his literary venture now enabled Fichte to think of his marriage as an event no longer to be delayed by uncertainty as to his own fortunes. Some portion of Hartmann Rahn’s property had been saved from the general wreck, and in the beginning of 1793 we learn from his letters to Johanna that at last all might be regarded as settled. “In June, or at the latest July,” he writes from Danzig in the spring of 1793, “I shall be with thee; but I should wish to enter the walls of Zürich as thy husband. Is that possible? Thy kind heart will give no hindrance to my wishes; but I do not know the circumstances.” The circumstances, as it happened, were adverse to his wish. Zurich customs exacted from foreigners proposing to marry in that city a certain duration of residence, and it was not till the 22d of October that at Baden his marriage with Johanna Rahn took place. A short tour in Switzerland, partly in company with the Danish poet Jens Baggesen, is noteworthy as having introduced Fichte to the acquaintance of Pestalozzi, whose educational ideas were destined to play an important part in the after-life of the philosopher.

During this calmer period of Fichte’s life, the great events of the French Revolution had been rapidly developing themselves, and the attention of thinkers as well as of the public had been drawn to the principles involved in or endangered by such a mighty movement. Rehberg, the secretary to the Hanoverian Privy Council, published in 1792 a work entitled ‘Essays on the French Revolution,’ in which a doubtful and timid view was expressed as to its principles, and the worst consequences were predicted as likely to follow from them. This book seems to have been the occasioning cause of Fichte’s anonymous political tracts, the first of which, ‘Reclamation of the Freedom of Thought from the Princes of Europe,’ a fiery oratorical piece, was completed at Danzig. The second and more important, ‘Contributions towards the Correction of the Public Judgment on the French Revolution,’ was begun at Danzig, and finished, so far as it went, at Zürich. In both the fundamental principle is the same. Defence of the right of remodelling constitutional forms is founded on the indefeasible and inalienable right to the liberty of realising the moral end of humanity, a right which precedes and underlies all others. The argument is in substance the translation of Rousseau’s ‘Contrat Social’ into the terms of the Kantian ethical system; and as the whole question of Right or Law^[2] is intimately connected with the very essence of Fichte’s philosophy, it is well to note how, at this comparatively early stage of his philosophic development, he expressed himself regarding it. As in the case of Kant’s ‘Rechtslehre,’ so in these essays, the notion of an original contract as basis of rights within the state, is accepted not as though it expressed historic fact, but as the only theoretical foundation for a union of intelligent, voluntary beings. Within a community founded on such a contract, there are various rights and degrees of rights assigned to the several individuals or classes. But of those rights, some are inalienable or indefeasible, for they express the condition in the absence of which the moral law, the supreme rule of conduct, is of no effect; others, rights regarding modes of action merely permitted, not enjoined by the moral law, are alienable, and may be resigned by the individual. Among the inalienable rights, that which is all-comprehensive is ethical freedom; but in one acceptation at least, freedom concerns not so much external acts as internal thoughts. Nevertheless the right to free expression of opinion, to free communication of thought, must be pronounced an inalienable or indefeasible right, for in its absence the possibility for acquiring the materials of thought is destroyed. No spiritual development is possible without the free interchange and communication of thought, nor is it given to any man or body of men to pronounce on the wisdom or goodness of thoughts with such confidence as to afford foundation for a supposed right to suppress freedom of thought on the ground of possible danger from, errors of thinking.^[3]

The same fundamental principle, that the ultimate foundation, and consequently the criterion, of all state rights, is to be found in the conditions necessary for the realisation of the ethical end, the spiritual development towards moral freedom, gives an answer to the more complicated problem of the right of revolution. Constitutional forms must needs be alterable; they cannot continuously correspond to the requirements of a developing moral culture. No original contract can be of a final nature, can prescribe limits to the moral and legal development of a community. The right to state reform is inalienable or indefeasible.

Nevertheless the dissolution of a constitutional form implies withdrawal from the original state contract, and such withdrawal appears almost in terms to contradict the very notion upon which state rights are founded.^[4] Fichte boldly faces this difficulty, contends that in all cases withdrawal from contract is possible, and that law or justice requires only compensation for such breach of pact, not unconditional fulfilment of it. If injury has been done by dissolving the contract on which the existing form of state government rests, let due compensation in kind and amount be rendered. Now the injury may be inflicted on the state itself, or on certain privileged classes in it. So far as the state itself is concerned, the only relations of life in respect of which compensation could be demanded, are those which rest upon or are secured by the assistance of the state—e.g., rights of property or right to development of one’s own culture. But the smallest consideration enables us to see that these rights and relations are prior in nature to state arrangements. They do not spring from the state, but the state is the mechanism whereby they are protected and regulated. No penalty, therefore, can be exacted by the state in consequence of the withdrawal of one or all of its members from the original contract. These dissentient wills may combine and form a state within the state: this is the essence of political revolution.^[5]

The consideration of the possible injury to privileged classes in the state, consequent on revolution, leads Fichte, in the second Heft of the Beiträge, into a somewhat elaborate discussion of the origin of privileges in general The principles of social economy involved in his treatment are not so distinct as they afterwards became; and as in dealing with his later writings some attention must be paid to them, it is sufficient here to remark that he subjects to the most trenchant criticism the grounds for the privileges of the nobility and the Church, absolutely rejects these as theoretically indefensible, and foreshadows the semi-socialist doctrine which is worked out in his later politico-economical treatises.^[6]

These political writings, breathing the warmest enthusiasm for the French Revolution, not unnaturally drew attention to Fichte. He was marked as a dangerous political character, and accused, both at the time and afterwards, of democratic tendencies. The influence of this feeling regarding his political sympathies is a notable fact in all the events of his after-career. As we shall see, much of the bitterness that was poured out against him at Jena on account of his theological views had its root in hatred for his advanced political doctrines. In substance the pamphlets are still interesting, both in themselves and as indicating the strong practical bent of Fichte’s thinking; in form, however, they are somewhat hard and pedantic. As in the ‘Critique of Revelation/ so here, the language is full of Kantian technicalities, the structure and progress of the argument are determined by the abstract forms of the Kantian system. In both works, Fichte had advanced to the limits drawn by the Critical Philosophy. He was now prepared to push beyond them.