Johann Gottlieb Fichte

“ Love is not required of him; nay, if you think deeper of it, it is even a kind of arrogance for a Ruler to presume to love the whole Human Race, or even his own nation,—to assure it of his love, and, as it were, make it dependent on his kindness. A Ruler such as we have described is free from such presumption: his reverence for humanity, as the image and protected child of God, does more than overpower it.
He looks upon his vocation as the Divine Will with regard to the Human Race; he looks upon its practice as the Divine Will with regard to himself—the present individual ”

“ How could such a Ruler, for example, answer before his conscience for determining upon a just war,—a war undertaken for the support of the national independence threatened either immediately or prospectively? for the victims who should fall in such a war, and for the manifold evils thereby inflicted on humanity? The Ruler who sees a Divine Purpose in his vocation stands firm and immovable before all these doubts, overtaken by no unmanly weakness. Is the war just?—then it is the will of God that there should be war ”

“ But the parts of the Whole must often be placed in peril on account of the Whole; peril by which, and not by the Ruler, its victims are selected from among individual men. How could a Ruler who recognises no other destiny for the Human Race but happiness here below, and looks upon himself only as the kind guardian of that happiness,—how could he answer before his conscience for the danger and possible sacrifice of any individual victim, since that individual must have had as good a claim to happiness as any other? ”

“ It is the business of all mankind to see that the conviction of the Divine Existence, without which the very essence of their own being passes away into nothing, shall never perish and disappear from among them;—above all, it is the business of the Rulers as the highest disposers of human affairs. ”

“ Whatever may fall a sacrifice to it, it is still the Divine Will that chooses the sacrifice. God has the most perfect right over all human life and human happiness, for both have proceeded from him and both return to him ”

“ To direct his whole thoughts and efforts,—to devote his whole life to the accomplishment of such a purpose as this:—that mortal men may fall out as little as possible with each other in the short span of time during which they have to live together, that they may have somewhat to eat and drink, and wherewithal to clothe themselves, until they make way for another generation, which again shall eat, and drink, and clothe itself,—this business would appear to a noble mind a vocation most unworthy of its nature. ”

“ In their life the unchangeableness of God manifests itself in the firmness and intrepidity of human will which no power can force from its destined path. In it the essential light of the Divinity manifests itself in human comprehension of all finite things in the One which endures for ever. In it the energy of God reveals itself, not in directly surrounding the Human Race with happiness—which is not its object—but in ordering, elevating, and ennobling it. A Godlike life is the most decisive proof which man can give of the being of a God. ”

“ Every man needs Religion,—every man may acquire it,—and with it every man may obtain Blessedness;—most of all, as we have seen above, does the Ruler need it. Unless he clothe his calling in the light of Religion, he can never pursue it with a good conscience. Without this, nothing remains for him but either thoughtlessness and a mere mechanical fulfilment of his vocation, without giving account to himself of its reasonableness or justice ”

“ The Ruler, after our idea of him, is secure against this view of his calling. Through the idea of human life by which he is animated, the Race among whom he practises his vocation is likewise ennobled. He who has constantly to keep in view the infirmities and weaknesses of men, who has to watch their daily course, and who has frequent opportunities of observing their general meanness and corruption, and who sees nothing more than these, cannot be much disposed to honour or to love them ”

“ He lives in honour, transfused in God to work His Eternal Will,—how then can fame, the judgment of mortal and perishable men, have any significance for him? Devoted to the Idea with his whole being,—how can he ever seek to pamper or to spare himself? His person,—all personality,—has disappeared in the Divine Idea of universal order. That order is his ever-present thought; only through it does he conceive of individual men: hence neither friend nor foe, neither favourite nor adversary, finds a place before him ”

“ All outward rank and elevation above other men which have been given, not to his person but to his dignity, and which are but conditions of the possession of this dignity, these will not dazzle him who knows how to value higher and more substantial distinctions. In a word: he looks upon his calling, not as a friendly service which he renders to the world, but as his absolute personal duty and obligation, by the performance of which alone he obtains, maintains, and justifies his personal existence, and without which he would pass away into nothing. ”

“ He does not respect old things because they are old; but as little does he desire novelty for its own sake. He looks for what is better and more perfect than the present; until this rises before him clearly and distinctly,—so long as change would lead only to difference, not improvement,—he remains inactive, and concedes to the old the privilege it derives from ancient possession. ”

“ If firm and intrepid will,—if clear and all-comprehending vision,—if a spirit of order and nobility speak to us in their conduct, then in their works do we see God face to face, and need no other proof:—God is, we will say,—for they are, and He in them. ”

“ Not that this thought excites him to vain self-exaltation;—he who is penetrated by the Idea has in it lost his personality, and he has no longer remaining any feeling of self, except that of employing his personal existence truly and conscientiously in his high vocation. He knows that it is not of himself that he has this intuition of the Idea and the power which accompanies it, but that he has received them; he knows that he can add nothing to what has been given him except its honest and conscientious use ”

“ Great spirits of the fore-world often rule over succeeding Ages long after their death, by means of men who in themselves are nothing, but are only continuations and prolongations of other lives. Very often too this is no misfortune; but those who desire to penetrate human life with deeper insight ought to know that these are not true Rulers, and that under them the Age does not move forward, but rests,—perhaps to gain strength for new creations. ”

“ He will never rouse himself to energy and labour merely that something may come to pass, or that he may gain a reputation for activity; for his desire is not merely that something may come to pass, but that the will of the Idea may be accomplished. ”

“ The Ruler, after our idea of him, in his estimate of mankind looks beyond that which they are in the actual world, to that which they are in the Divine Idea—to that which therefore they may be, ought to be, and one day assuredly will be ”

“ He comprehends this Life with clear consciousness as the immediate life and energy of God within him, as the fulfilment of the Divine Will in and by his person. It is unnecessary to repeat the proofs which we have already adduced in general, that through this consciousness his thought is sanctified, transfigured, and bathed in the Divinity. ”

“ He in whom Learned Culture has actually accomplished its end,—the attainment and possession of the Idea,—shows, by the manner in which he regards and practises the calling of the Scholar, that his vocation is to him, before all other things, honourable and holy. ”

“ This view of his calling as the Divine Will in him, supports and justifies him before himself in an important difficulty, which must very often occur to him who conscientiously follows this vocation, and makes his step firm, determined, and unwavering. In no circumstances indeed should the individual, considered strictly as an individual, be sacrificed to the Whole; however unimportant the individual, however great the Whole and the interest of the Whole which is at stake. ”

“ It is expressed in the first mode by those who, as the highest free Leaders of men, originally guide and order their affairs:—their relations with each other, or the legal condition,—and their relation to passive nature, or the dominion of reason over the irrational world;—who possess the right and calling, either by themselves or in concert with others, to think, judge, and resolve independently concerning the actual arrangement of these relations. ”

“ It is not their part to bring forward the theoretical proof from human reason, or to regulate the mode in which this proof shall be adduced by the second class of Scholars; but the practical proof, by their own lives, and that in the highest degree, devolves peculiarly upon them. ”

“ That there is a God, is made evident by a very little serious reflection upon the outward world. We must end at last by resting all existence which demands an extrinsic foundation, upon a Being the fountain of whose life is within Himself ”