Johann Gottlieb Fichte

“ Our Morality,—if it be Morality which we now propound to you,—our Morality does not enact laws; like all philosophy, it confines itself to nature and necessity, and only describes what does and does not flow from these. Could this Morality permit itself an external wish, and hope for its realization, it would be to strike the hard and barren rock which confines the fountain of good, so that its waters might spontaneously gush forth in their original purity to enrich the inward juices of the tree ”

“ I have said that the true-minded Student will not make himself a slave to common opinion; nevertheless he will accommodate himself to established customs where these are in themselves indifferent, simply because he honours himself. The educated youth grows up amid these customs; were he to cast them off, he must of necessity deliberately resolve to do so, and attract notice and attention to himself by his singularities and his offences against decorum. How should he whose time is occupied with weightier matters find leisure to ponder such a subject? ”

“ Every period of life has its peculiar calling. Good-natured laughter at vulgarity belongs to ripened age; the attitude of youth towards it ought to be that of stern aversion;—and no one will be able in after years to look on it, and to laugh at it, and yet remain truly free and pure from its taint, who does not begin in youth by avoiding and hating it. ”

“ Let who will be teacher of external Morality, we shall not here come into contact with the vulgar who find their motives to action in impulses from without.
We have already said that the acceptance of his vocation by the Student as a Divine Thought, makes his own person holy and honourable to him. This view of his person will spontaneously manifest itself in his outward life, without direct thought and will upon his part, as sacred purity and freedom from all constraint;—not expressly recognised as such by himself, but because no other mode of life falls within his range of thought. ”

“ In this spirit we have taken up the question, and in this spirit we have given it the following answer:—In the first place, God has conceived of the whole world, not only as it now is, but also as it shall become by its own spontaneous growth; moreover, what it now is lies in the original Divine Thought as the germ of an endless development,—and that a development proceeding from the highest that exists in it, namely, from the rational beings, by means of their own freedom. ”

“ This thought of the divinity and holiness of his vocation is the soul of his life, the impulse which produces all that goes forth from him, the aether in which everything around him is bathed. His conduct and doings in the outward world must then harmonize with this thought. He needs no conscious effort of his individual will to bring his actions into harmony with this Divine Thought ”

“ He finds himself necessitated to study by his position, which being determined without his assistance, he must regard as the purpose of God with him. He enters upon this vocation in consequence of the thought that it is the purpose of God in him and for him, with Integrity; for so we call the faith that God has a purpose in our being. By thus embracing his vocation not merely because it is his, but because it is made his solely by the Divine Thought and purpose, does his person as well as knowledge, which is his calling, become to him, before all other things, honourable and holy. ”

“ This propensity to nonexistence, to spiritual torpor, becomes a habit, a second nature; it surprises us in our studies or while listening to our teacher, creates a chasm in what would otherwise be a strictly connected whole, interposes itself here and there between ideas which we should connect together, so that we cannot comprehend even those which are most easy and intelligible. How this propensity should seize upon youth, may remain unaccountable even to men of the deepest penetration and judgment ”

“ The lectures which I now resume have been begun under many unfavourable circumstances. In the first place, I have had to contemplate my subject from a point of view much higher than the common one,—from an elevation to which every Student may not have been prepared to rise. A newly-installed teacher in a University cannot be well acquainted with the extent to which scientific culture is really to be found there; and yet it may naturally be assumed that the means of such culture long notoriously in existence have been already brought into use. ”

“ Nothing is more destructive of character than for man to lose all faith in his own resolutions, because he has so often determined, and again determined, to do that which nevertheless he has never done. Then he feels it necessary to flee from himself; he can no longer turn inward to his own thoughts, lest he be covered with shame before them; he shuns no society so much as his own, and deliberately gives himself up to dissipation and self-abandonment. Not so the upright Student: he abides by his purpose ”

“ In the Eternal Thought of God his spiritual power has its source; it is thus his most precious treasure, and he will not suffer it to fall into impotent rigidity before it has fulfilled its task. He watches unceasingly over himself, and never allows himself to rest in slothful inaction. ”

“ Scholars, namely, in so far as they have elevated themselves to that Divine Thought by the various means to the attainment of the highest spiritual culture which exist in every age through the Divine Thought itself.
That Divine Thought of man as a Scholar must now itself take possession of him, and become his innermost soul, the true essential life dwelling in his life. ”

“ The philosophical view regards things as they are in themselves,—i.e. in the world of pure thought, of which world God is the essential and fundamental principle,—and thus as God himself must have thought of them, could we attribute thought to him. ”

“ Jesting is not suited for youth, they know little of man who think so; where youth is wasted in sport, it will never attain to earnestness and true existence. The portion of youth in life is the Earnest and the Sublime; only after such a youth does maturity attain to the Beautiful, and with it to sportful enjoyment of the Vulgar. Further, everything is vulgar and ignoble which weakens spiritual power. I shall instance idleness; to mention drunkenness or sensuality would be below the dignity of our subject. ”

“ It is only for a short period that this exertion of the will is needful; afterwards, its result continues of itself, for it is happily as easy,—or even more easy because it is more natural,—for man to accustom himself to industry than to idleness, and after a time passed in sustained activity it even becomes impossible for him to live without employment. ”

“ It is doubtless of all things most ignoble, when man, out of too great complacency, which at bottom is cowardice and want of spirit, or out of indolence, which prevents him from thinking for himself and drawing the principles of his conduct from his own mind,—gives himself up to others, and relies upon them rather than upon himself. ”

“ Such an one has indeed no self within him, and believes in no self within him, but goes as a suppliant to others, and entreats of them, one after another, to lend him their personality. How can such an one regard himself as honourable and holy, when he neither knows nor acknowledges his own being? ”

“ Everything is vulgar and ignoble which degrades the fancy and blunts the taste for the Holy. Tell me what direction thy thoughts take,—not when with tightened hand thou constrainest them to a purpose,—but when in thy hours of recreation thou allowest them freely to rove abroad ”

“ Do they, when released from the constraint with which thou hast directed them towards a serious pursuit, eagerly turn to brood over sensual pleasures, and find relaxation in the pursuit of these?—then hast thou a vulgar taste, thou must invite animalism into the innermost recesses of thy soul before it can seem well with thee there. ”

“ The man of mature age may indeed turn his thoughts to such perversions, that he may discover in themselves the evidence of their perversion, and so laugh at them: he is secure from their contagion. Not so the inexperienced youth ”

“ Amusements in which the form of art is thrown around unmeaning emptiness, or even productions which appeal to the senses alone, and seek to please man by awakening and exciting his animal nature, these have no charms for him. ”

“ No man should linger about the surface of a thought, and repeat in another form what has been said an hundred times before: he who can do no more than this had better be silent altogether; but he who can do otherwise will never hesitate to do so. Further, the individual parts of what is in itself a systematic whole, have been necessarily broken up by intervals of weeks; and in these public lectures, I could not well adhere strictly to the practice which I have generally adopted in all purely philosophical instruction, i.e. ”