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.