Johann Gottlieb Fichte

“ What is the use of all knowledge, if one does not act in accordance with it? This remark implies that knowledge is regarded as a means to action, and the latter as the real end. One could put the question the other way round and ask: How can we possibly act well without knowing what the Good is? This way of expressing it would regard knowledge as conditioning action. But both expressions are one-sided, and the truth is that both, knowledge as well as action, are in the same way inseparable elements of rational life. ”

“ At the beginning it will be far easier for this part of the nation to grasp the language of antiquity in its first and unchanged form, to penetrate the memorials of its culture, and to bring into them enough fresh life to enable them to be adapted to the new life that has arisen. In short, it is from them that the study of classical antiquity has taken its way over modern Europe. In its enthusiasm for the unsolved problems of antiquity it will continue to work at them, but, of course, only as one works at a problem that has been set, not by the needs of life, but by mere curiosity. ”

“ With foreigners the latter course is almost inevitable, but when a German boasts about his genius and his happy nature he displays a love of foreign ways which is unworthy of him and which, like every imitation of foreign ways, arises from the craving to be distinguished. It is true that nothing excellent will be produced in any nation in the world without a primitive impulse in man which, as something supersensuous, is rightly called Genius, to give it the foreign name. ”

“ But science is life perpetual in itself, as we have just expressed it, only when thought is the real mind and disposition of the one who thinks, in such a way that, without special effort and even without being clearly conscious of it, he views and judges everything else that he thinks, views, and judges according to that fundamental thought, and, if the latter exerts an influence on action, just as inevitably acts according to it. ”

“ But in a living language, if only life in it is really lived, the words and their meanings increase and change continually, and for that very reason new combinations become possible; and the language, which never is, but eternally is becoming, does not speak itself, but he who wishes to use it must speak it himself in his own fashion and creatively for his own needs. The latter undoubtedly demands far more diligence and practice than the former. ”

“ Then the hitherto continuous stream of the development of our race would be in fact at an end; barbarism would be bound to begin again and to go on without hope of deliverance, until we were all living in caves again like wild beasts and, like them, devouring one another. That this is really so and must inevitably follow, only the German can see, of course, and only he shall see it. To the foreigner, who, since he knows no foreign culture, has unlimited scope to admire himself in his own, it must and it may always appear preposterous blasphemy proceeding from ill-educated ignorance. ”

“ Among the people with a living language investigation proceeds from a vital need, which is thereby to be satisfied; hence, investigation receives all the compelling impulses which life has in itself. But among the people with a dead language investigation seeks nothing more than to pass away the time in a manner that is pleasant and in keeping with the sense of the beautiful, and it has attained its object completely when it has done this. ”

“ Non-German countries are the earth, from which fruitful vapours detach themselves and arise to the clouds, and by which even now the old gods condemned to Tartarus keep in touch with the sphere of life. The mother-country is the eternal sky enveloping the earth, the sky in which the light vapours are condensed to clouds which, impregnated by the lightning flash of the Thunderer from the other world, descend in the form of fertilizing rain, uniting sky and earth and causing the gifts whose home is in the sky to germinate in the lap of earth. ”

“ When mental culture and life thus go their own separate ways in a nation, the natural consequence is that those classes who have no access to mental culture, and who do not even receive the results of it as they would in a living nation, are placed at a disadvantage as compared with the educated classes and are regarded, so to speak, as a different species of humanity, unequal to them in mental power from the beginning and by the mere fact of birth. ”

“ But everyone to whose inmost being happiness has been revealed is bound to wish that everyone else may experience the same bliss; he is thus driven, and must work, to the end that the stream from which he has drawn his own well-being may spread itself over others too. It is different with him who has merely apprehended the possibility of second-hand thinking. Just as its substance yields him neither weal nor woe, but merely occupies his leisure agreeably and entertainingly, so it is impossible for him to believe that it can bring weal or woe to anyone else. ”

“ The very wealth of material bequeathed by antiquity, and the ease with which the work can be carried on in this fashion, will enable them to bring an abundance of such images into the field of vision of the modern world. Now, when these images of the ancient world in their new form reach that part of the original stock which, by its retention of the language, has remained in the stream of original culture, they will arouse the attention of the people and stimulate them to activity on their own part ”

“ Still less have we in mind the assistance of individual members who have fallen behind in the general development. Next, when we speak of mental culture we are to understand thereby, first of all, philosophy, for it is philosophy which scientifically comprehends the eternal archetype of all spiritual life. We must designate it by the foreign name, as the Germans have shown themselves unwilling to adopt the German name [1] that was recently suggested. For this science, and for all science based upon it, the claim is now made that it influences the life of a people who have a living language. ”

“ In our opinion the decision as to the greater or less euphony of a language should not be based upon the direct impression, which depends on so many matters of chance. Even a judgment of this kind should be founded on definite principles. The merit of a language in this respect should undoubtedly be, first of all, that it exhausts and comprehensively presents the possibilities of the human organs of speech, and, secondly, that it combines the separate sounds in a natural and convenient unity. ”

“ But thought is in no wise life and disposition when it is thought only as the thought of a life that is strange or foreign, however clearly and completely it may be comprehended as a thought that has a mere possibility of existence in this way, and however clearly one might think, as perhaps someone could think, in this fashion. ”

“ But if ever foreign countries, in their blindness to this relationship, should be so far carried away by what appears on the surface as to attempt to deprive their mother-country of its independence and so to destroy and absorb it, they would thereby, if their attempt succeeded, sever for themselves the last vein connecting them with nature and with life, and fall defenceless into spiritual death, which indeed, apart from this, has been revealing itself to be their true nature more and more clearly as time has gone on. ”

“ In general, when we consider the history of civilization in a race of men which is split up in history into an age of antiquity and a new world, we shall find on the whole that the function of these two main branches in the original development of this new world is as follows. That part of the vigorous nation which has gone abroad and adopted the language of antiquity thereby acquires a much closer relationship to antiquity. ”

“ But we Germans must first seek it out and accustom ourselves to the belief that something is beautiful, proper, and convenient, which does not naturally appear so to us. The main reason for all this in the case of the German is his belief in the greater distinction of romanized countries, together with his craving to be just as distinguished and artificially to create in Germany too that gulf between the upper classes and the people, which came about naturally in foreign countries. ”

“ It is further evident that in the end the philosophy of a people of this kind will consciously resign itself to the fact that it is only an explanation of the dictionary, or, as un-German spirits among us have expressed it in a more high-sounding fashion, a metacritic of language; and, finally, that such a people will acknowledge some mediocre didactic poem in comedy form on the subject of hypocrisy to be its greatest philosophical work. ”

“ But this impulse in itself only stimulates the power of imagination, and brings forth in it figures that hover above the ground but are never completely defined. To bring these down completed to the ground of actual life and to fix them firmly therein, this requires thought, diligent, deliberate, and in accordance with a definite principle. Genius delivers to diligence the stuff to be worked upon, and the latter without the former would have to work upon either what had been worked upon already or else upon nothing at all. ”

“ Naturalness on the German side, arbitrariness and artificiality on the foreign side, are the fundamental differences. If we keep to the former we are just like all our fellow-Germans, who understand us and accept us as their equals ”

“ This activity eternally receives its pattern from science, and its ability to form itself according to this pattern from art, and in so far it might appear that science and art exist as means to an end, which is active life. But in this form of activity life itself is never completed and made absolute as a unity, but goes on into the infinite. Now, if life is to exist as such an absolute unity, it must be in another form. ”

“ In the former case thought has by itself directly taken hold of our self, and made it into itself; and through this reality of thought for us, arising in this way, we obtain insight into its necessity. As we have just said, no freedom can forcibly bring about the latter consequence, which must be produced of itself, and thought itself must take hold of us and form us according to itself. ”

“ A people as yet uncultivated, with a very lively power of imagination, and at the same time childlike in mind and free from national vanity (the Teutons seem to have had all these qualities) is attracted by what is far away, and likes to make remote countries and distant islands the habitation for the objects of its desires and the glories of which it dreams. ”

“ But as soon as they have really grasped them and not, as it were, merely passed them on from hand to hand, they will grasp them as their nature impels them to do, not merely as knowledge of a foreign life, but as an element of their own life. ”

“ Although even this consequence of the death of the language can be mitigated in the first years of the new nation by a humanitarian religion and by the lack of special skill among the higher classes, yet, as time goes on, this despising of the people will become more and more unconcealed and cruel. That is why the educated classes assume superiority and give themselves airs ”

“ But they are in no wise true in the strict sense, for it is just as impossible that there should be more than one end in itself as that there should be more than one Absolute. The sole end in itself, apart from which there can be no other, is spiritual life. Now this expresses itself in part and appears as an eternal stream, with itself as source—that is, as eternal activity. ”

“ They are true in the following double but limited sense; first, that it is not the duty of science or art, as some have thought, to be useful at what may be called a lower stage of life, e.g., temporal or sensuous life, or for everyday edification; then, that an individual, in consequence of his personal seclusion from a spiritual world regarded as a whole, may be entirely absorbed in these special branches of the universal divine life without needing a stimulus from outside them, and may find in them complete satisfaction. ”

“ In this latter case, between our thinking at second-hand and our real thinking there lies a wide field of chance and freedom—a freedom that we feel no desire to use; and so this thinking at second-hand remains apart from us; it is a merely possible thinking, one made free from us and always freely to be repeated. ”

“ But, in apparent contrast to this assertion, it has often been said, and by some among ourselves, that philosophy, science, the fine arts, etc., are ends in themselves and not handmaids of life, and that it is degrading them to esteem them according to their utility in the service of life. ”