Schiller had good reasons for being dissatisfied with the article that Fichte sent him in the summer of 1775 for publication in the journal Die Horen.¹ As is well known, the dispute that erupted between the two men following Schiller's critical remarks led Fichte to give up publishing his text in Schiller's journal. It must be said that the latter was in a particularly bad position to judge the article, entitled "On the Spirit and the Letter in Philosophy," for the simple reason that Fichte had provided him, at first, with just the three first sections of a text that would eventually comprise ten. Thus, Schiller was forced to base his judgment on a mere fragment of a text whose true length he did not know, and as a result he could not fathom the novelty and originality of Fichte's argument.