Johann Gottlieb Fichte

“ When I shall one day follow, there will be but joy for me; sorrow shall remain behind in the sphere I shall have left.
The world, on which but now I gazed with wonder, passes away from before me, and sinks from my sight. With all the fulness of life, order, and increase which I beheld in it, it is yet but the curtain by which one infinitely more perfect is concealed from me, and the germ from which that other shall develope itself. My Faith looks behind this veil, and cherishes and animates this germ. ”

“ Now that my heart is closed against all desire for earthly things, now that I have no longer any sense for the transitory and perishable, the universe appears before my eyes clothed in a more glorious form. The dead heavy mass, which did but stop up space, has vanished; and in its place there flows onward, with the rushing music of mighty waves, an eternal stream of life and power and action which issues from the original Source of all life—from Thy Life, O Infinite One! for all life is Thy Life, and only the religious eye penetrates to the realm of True Beauty. ”

“ That there are free beings, destined to reason and morality, who strive against reason, and call forth all their powers to the support of folly and vice;—just as little will this disturb me, and stir up within me indignation and wrath. The perversity which would hate what is good because it is good, and promote evil merely from a love of evil as such,—this perversity which alone could excite my just anger, I ascribe to no one who bears the form of man, for I know that it does not lie in human nature. ”

“ Reason is not for the sake of existence, but existence for the sake of reason. An existence which does not of itself satisfy reason, and solve all her questions, cannot by possibility be the true being.
And, then, are those actions which are commanded by the voice of conscience,—by that voice whose dictates I never dare to criticise, but must always obey in silence,—are those actions, in reality, always the means, and the only means, for the attainment of the earthly purpose of humanity? ”

“ It is only the practical man of society within me whose anger is excited by folly and vice; not the contemplative man who reposes undisturbed in the calm completeness of his own spirit,
Should I be visited by corporeal suffering, pain, or disease, I cannot avoid feeling them, for they are accidents of my nature; and as long as I remain here below, I am a part of Nature. But they shall not grieve me. They can only touch the nature with which, in a wonderful manner, I am united,—not myself, the being exalted above all Nature. The sure end of all pain, and of all sensibility to pain, is death ”

“ Never impelled by any other motive than the desire after what can be actually realized in this world, there is for us no true freedom,—no freedom which holds the ground of its determination absolutely and entirely within itself. Our freedom is, at best, that of the self-forming plant; not essentially higher in its nature, but only more artistical in its results; not producing a mere material form with roots, leaves, and blossoms, but a mind with impulses, thoughts, and actions. We cannot have the slightest conception of true freedom, because we do not ourselves possess it ”

“ Absorbed by mere earthly objects, lost in them with all my thoughts and efforts, moved and urged onward only by the notion of a result to be realized out of ourselves,—by the desire of such a result, and our enjoyment therein,—insensible and dead to the pure impulse of reason, which gives a law to itself, and offers to our aspirations a purely spiritual end,—the immortal Psyche remains, with fettered pinions, fastened to the earth. Our philosophy becomes the history of our own heart and life; and according to what we ourselves are, do we conceive of man and his vocation. ”

“ Knowledge is not this organ:—no knowledge can be its own foundation, its own proof; every knowledge pre-supposes another higher knowledge on which it is founded, and to this ascent there is no end. It is Faith, that voluntary acquiescence in the view which is naturally presented to us, because only through this view we can fulfil our vocation;—this it is, which first lends a sanction to knowledge, and raises to certainty and conviction that which without it might be mere delusion. It is not knowledge, but a resolution of the will to admit the validity of knowledge. ”

“ Not inferences of reason, for there are none such; it is the interest we have in a reality which we desire to produce;—the good, absolutely for its own sake,—the common and sensuous, for the sake of the enjoyment they afford. No one who lives can divest himself of this interest, and just as little can he cast off the faith which this interest brings with it. We are all born in faith;—he who is blind, follows blindly the secret and irresistible impulse; he who sees, follows by sight, and believes because he resolves to believe. ”

“ And thus, should it still appear that, during my whole earthly life, I have not advanced the good cause a single hair’s-breadth in this world, yet I dare not cease my efforts:—after every unsuccessful attempt, I must still believe that the next will be successful. But in the spiritual world no step is ever lost. In short, I do not pursue the earthly purpose for its own sake alone, or as a final aim; but only because my true final aim, obedience to the law of conscience, does not present itself to me in this world in any other shape than as the advancement of this end. ”

“ I am indeed compelled, when I regard my will, determined according to the dictates of conscience, as a fact, and an efficient cause in the world of sense, to refer it to that earthly purpose of humanity as a means to the accomplishment of an end;—not as if I should first survey the plan of the world, and from this knowledge calculate what I had to do; but the specific action, which conscience directly enjoins me to do, reveals itself to me at once as the only means by which, in my position, I can contribute to the attainment of that end. ”

“ Should it ever seem to me as if truth had been put to silence, and virtue expelled from the world; as if folly and vice had now summoned all their powers, and even assumed the place of reason and true wisdom;—should it happen, that just when all good men looked with hope for the regeneration of the human race, everything should become even worse than it had been before;—should the work, well and happily begun, on which the eyes of all true-minded men were fixed with joyous expectation, suddenly and unexpectedly be changed into the vilest forms of evil,—these things will not disturb me ”

“ But pure and holy, and as near to Thine own nature as aught can be to mortal eye, does this Thy Life flow forth as the bond which unites spirit with spirit, as the breath and atmosphere of a rational world, unimaginable and incomprehensible, and yet there, clearly visible to the spiritual eye. Borne onwards in this stream of light, thought floats from soul to soul, with out pause or variation, and returns purer and brighter from a kindred mind. ”

“ A mere presentation I now see to be a deceptive show; my presentations must have a meaning beneath them, and if my entire knowledge revealed to me nothing but knowledge, I would be defrauded of my whole life. That there is nothing whatever but my presentations or conceptions, is, to the natural sense of mankind, a silly and ridiculous conceit which no man can seriously entertain, and which requires no refutation. To the better-informed judgment, which knows the deep, and, by mere reasoning, irrefragable grounds for this assertion, it is a prostrating, annihilating thought. ”

“ But it is not Nature, it is Freedom itself, by which the greatest and most terrible disorders incident to our race are produced; man is the cruelest enemy of man. Lawless hordes of savages still wander over vast wildernesses;—they meet, and the victor devours his foe at the triumphal feast:—or where culture has at length united these wild hordes under some social bond, they attack each other, as nations, with the power which law and union have given them. ”

“ Conscience alone is the root of all truth: whatever is opposed to conscience, or stands in the way of the fulfilment of her behests, is assuredly false; and it is impossible for me to arrive at a conviction of its truth, even if I should be unable to discover the fallacies by which it is produced.
So has it been with all men who have ever seen the light of this world. Without being conscious of it, they apprehend all the reality which has an existence for them, through faith alone; and this faith forces itself on them simultaneously with their existence;—it is born with them. ”

“ I have discovered that I myself, by my own act alone, produce my whole system of thought, and the particular view which I take of truth in general; since it remains with me either to deprive myself of all sense of truth by means of over-refinement, or to yield myself to this view with faithful obedience. My whole mode of thought, and the cultivation which my understanding receives, as well as the objects to which I direct it, depend entirely on myself. True insight is merit;—the perversion of my capacity for knowledge, thoughtlessness, obscurity, error, and unbelief, are guilt. ”

“ Whatever is commanded by that voice, whatever executed by that power, is, in that plan, assuredly and truly good. I remain tranquil amid all the events of this world, for they are in Thy world. Nothing can perplex or surprise or dishearten me, as surely as Thou livest, and I can look upon Thy life. For in Thee, and through Thee, O Infinite One! do I behold even my present world in another light. Nature, and natural consequences, in the destinies and conduct of free beings, as opposed to Thee, become empty, unmeaning words. Nature is no longer ”

“ In this world, will alone, as it lies concealed from mortal eye in the secret obscurities of the soul, is the first link in a chain of consequences that stretches through the whole invisible realms of spirit; as, in the physical world, action—a certain movement of matter—is the first link in a material chain that runs through the whole system of nature. The will is the efficient, living principle of the world of reason, as motion is the efficient, living principle of the world of sense. ”

“ I say, it is the law which commands me to act that of itself assigns an end to my action; the same inward voice that compels me to think that I ought to act thus, compels me also to believe that from my action some result will arise; it opens to my spiritual vision a prospect into another world,—which is really a world, a state, namely, and not an action,—but another and better world than that which is present to the physical eye; it makes me aspire after this better world, embrace it with every impulse, long for its realization, live only in it, and in it alone find satisfaction. ”

“ Through that which to others seems a dead mass, my eye beholds this eternal life and movement in every vein of sensible and spiritual Nature, and sees this life rising in ever-increasing growth, and ever purifying itself to a more spiritual expression. The universe is to me no longer that ever-recurring circle, that eternally-repeated play, that monster swallowing itself up, only to bring itself forth again as it was before ”

“ The voice of conscience, which imposes on each his particular duty, is the light-beam on which we come forth from the bosom of the Infinite, and assume our place as particular individual beings; it fixes the limits of our personality; it is thus the true original element of our nature, the foundation and material of all our life. The absolute freedom of the will, which we bring down with us from the Infinite into the world of Time, is the principle of this our life. ”

“ Disease sweeps into an untimely grave men in the pride of their strength, and children whose existence has as yet borne no fruit; pestilence stalks through blooming lands, leaves the few who escape its ravages like lonely orphans bereaved of the accustomed support of their fellows, and does all that it can do to give back to the desert regions which the labour of man has won from thence as a possession to himself. ”

“ Without the idea of freedom, we are likewise without the faculty for another world. Everything of this kind floats past before us like words that are not addressed to us; like a pale shadow, without colour or meaning, which we know not how to lay hold of or retain. We leave it as we find it, without the least participation or sympathy. Or should we ever be urged by a more active zeal to consider it seriously, we then convince ourselves to our own satisfaction that all such ideas are untenable and worthless reveries, which the man of sound understanding unhesitatingly rejects ”

“ Had it been the whole purpose of our existence to produce an earthly condition of our race, there would only have been required an unerring mechanism by which our outward actions might have been determined, and we would not have needed to be more than wheels well fitted to the great machine. Freedom would have been, not merely in vain, but even obstructive; a virtuous will wholly superfluous. The world would, in that case, be most unskillfully directed, and attain the purposes of its existence by wasteful extravagance and circuitous byeways. ”

“ Death and Birth are but the struggle of life with itself to assume a more glorious and congenial form. And my death,—how can it be aught else, since I am not a mere show and semblance of life, but bear within me the one original, true, and essential Life? It is impossible to conceive that Nature should annihilate a life which does not proceed from her; the Nature which exists for me, and not I for her. ”