Literature. — Besides the works already mentioned, see J. H. Fichte, ./. G. Fichte' s Lehen (Sulzbach, 1830); J. II. Fii'hte, Karakteristlk d. neueUon Philosnphie (Sulz- bach, 1841) ; Erdnrann, Entuickelung d, deutschen Spe- cidiition seit Kant (vol. i) ; W. Smith, Memoir of J. G. Fichte (Lond. 18-18, 2d ed. 12mo) ; Christian Examiner, May, 18-11, p. 192 sq. ; Foreir/n Quart. Rev. Oct. 18-15; Living Age, vi, 1G2 ; xxx, 193; Tenn«mann, Manual Hist. Phil. (ed. Bohn), § 4(;0-415 ; Morcll, AInd. Philos- oplM/, ch. y, § 2 ; Lewes, Uiston/ of Philosophij (Lond. 18G7, 3d ed.), ii, 490 sq. ; Krug, AVg. Handu-orterbuch d. philos. Wissenschnften. ii, "1 sq. ; Saintes, History rf nationalism, bk. ii, ch. xiii ; Schwegler, Hist. ofPhilos- oph;i, tvansl. by Seelye, § 41 ; Lasson, J. G. Fichte im ]'crhuJtniss zu Kirchc tmd Staat (Barl. 1803); Kahnis, G<rman Protestantism, lik. i, ch. iv ; Jl'Cosh, Intuitions (s30 Index); ^lill*, in Christian Examiiier, July, 1866. Fichte 's Wissenschaftskhre has recently been adniira- III.— M H
bly translated by A. E. Kroeger, under tha title The Science of Knoidedge (Fliiladelphia, 1868, 12mo).
Ficinus, Maksilius (Marsif/lio Flcino) — the prin- cipal restorer of the Platonic philosoph}', and the most enthusiastic of it? modern advocates — was born at Flor- ence Oct. 18, 1433, and died at his villa of Careggi, in the neighborhood, Oct. 1, 1499. He was the son of the chief physician of Cosmo di Medici, and was de- signed for the same profession ; but his youthful intel- ligence attracted the great Florentine, and induced his selection as the prospective head of the projected Me- dicean Academy. During the sessions of the Council of Florence, the conversations of Gemistus I'letho had inspired Cosmo with profound admiration for the Pla- tonic doctrine, and witli a desire to disseminate it in Tuscany. The excessive refinements and logomachies of the later schoolmen had discredited the sj'stem of Aristotle ; the disturbance and alarms preceding the capture of Constantinople had driven many educated Greeks into Itah", and iirtroduced the works and the followers of Plato and the Neo-Platonists ; and the ac- rimonious controversy of Pletho and Gennadius at- tracted attention to the sublime reveries and eloquent expositions of the Platonic school.
Marsilius Ficinus devoted himself with ardor to the ac- quisition and illustration of the Platonic doctrines, and was abundantly supplied by the Medici with MSS., and with the other requirements for the successful pros- ecution of his task. At the age of 23 he presented to his patron a synopsis of the tenets of the academy, but was recommended to suppress it, as his knowledge was obtained at second-hand, and he had not j-et attained an adequate acquaintance witli the Greek language. Ficinus continued his studies, and devoted his whole life to the translation and interpretation of the acade- mic texts, inclining stronglj' to the views of the later Platonists. He rendered into Latin the whole works of Plato and of Plotinus, and parts of the writings of Proclus, Porphyry, lamlilichus, etc. The translation of Plotinus was undertaken at the suggestion of Pico di Mirandola, and was published in 1492. His whole heart seems to have I)een thrown into this labor of love. In part he transforms himself into Plotinus ; in a greater degree he constrains Plotinus to give utter- ance to his own preconceptions. To each chapter of the work is prefixed a copious summary, which pre- sents rather Ficino's scheme of transcendentalism than an accurate abbreviation of the text. It. however, affords something like an intelligible and coherent ex- position, in place of the dark, oracular, and loosel}"-- connected pantheism of his author, which baffled even the penetration of Longinus. The intricacy, the opac- ity', and the mysticism of the doctrine expounded, and the ruggedness of its original exposition, are not re- lieved by any literary graces on the part of the sum- marist and translator. His stjle is inconceivably harsh, angular, and obscure ; yet it is impossible to withhold admiration from the vigor, and skill, and grasp with which he compels the reluctant Latin to lend itself to the demands of the subject — to twist, and wind, and adapt itself to the sinuosities of the most plastic of all languages, applied to the most perplexed and attenuated of all speculations — and to inter])ret a stj'le and a system totally foreign to the air of Latium. Lucretius apologized in the Golden Age for the stuli- bornuess of his native tongue in the treatment of the simple and pers])icuous doctrines of Epicurus ; and a much more wonderful power is exhibited liy Ficinus in constraining the dead and stiffened tongue of Rome to coirform itself to all the convolutions of Greek thought and fantas}' in their most bewildering license. Nor is it just to leave unnoticed the frequency with which Ficinus catches and reflects the splendors of his original, and reproduces the magnificences of their ex- pression.
Attempts had often beorr made, and were renewed in the 15th century, to conciliate the teachings of Pl*r
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to and Aristotle, and the evident aim of Ficinus was to impose upon Plato and the Neo-Platonists a signifi- cance which might identify, or at least harmonize, their doctrines with the Christian creed. It was a pre- posterous revival of a design fruitlessly attempted at Alexandria in the age of Origen and his successors. Pantheism is wholly antipathetic to Christianity, whetlier presented as Neo-Platonism, as Spinozism, or as German transcendentalism. But it was a natural eilbrt in that era of confusion and hopeful anticipation which witnessed the Renaissance. Moreover, the doc- trines of Plotinus himself are manifestly moulded and modified by the contemporaneous influences of Chris- tianity ; and it is a curious taste to detect the Chris- tian impress which marks so much of his abstruse met- aphysics, especially in the closing books of the last jEneids. It is scarcely possible to read the conclud- ing capitulum, or summary, without feeling that the hallucination of Ficinus was an honest as well as an earnest delusion ; and that, if he misrepresented both Plato and the Alexandrian school hy Christianizing their doctrine, he did not suffer himself to be seduced from a recognition of the personality of the Supreme Being, or into any position consciously at variance with the Christian creed.