Johann Gottlieb Fichte

“ In the anticipation of the future lies the true character of humanity; it is therefore the source of all human vice. Shut out the source, and vice is no more; and Rousseau did effectually exclude it from his State of Nature.
But it is also true that man, as surely as he is man and not a beast, is not destined to remain in this condition. Vice, indeed, would thus cease; but with it Virtue, and Reason too, would be destroyed. Man becomes an irrational creature; there is a new race of animals; men no longer exist. ”

“ He has done his work. He has kindled fire in many souls, who have carried on what he began. But he wrought almost without being conscious of his own influence; he wrought without intending to rouse others to the work, without weighing their labour against the sum of general evil and depravity. This want of endeavour after self-activity reigns throughout his whole system of ideas. He is the man of passive sensibility, not at the same time of proper active resistance to its power. His lovers, led astray by passion, become virtuous; but we do not rightly perceive how they become so. ”

“ No man has opposed this truth more decidedly, on more plausible grounds, or with more powerful eloquence, than Rousseau. To him the advancement of culture is the sole cause of all human depravity. According to him there is no salvation for man but in a State of Nature; and—what indeed flows most accurately from his principles—that class of men who most effectually promote the advancement of culture, the Scholar-class, is at once the source and centre of all human misery and corruption. ”

“ Sensualism shall not reign; it cannot reign when it is destroyed, when it ceases to exist; or when it is not developed, when it has not acquired power. Hence Rousseau’s State of Nature.
In the State of Nature the faculties peculiar to man shall not be cultivated; they shall not even be distinguished. Man shall have no other wants than those of his animal nature; he shall live like the beast on the meadow beside him. It is true that in this State none of those crimes against which Rousseau’s feelings so strongly revolted would find a place ”

“ I have placed the vocation of man in the continual advancement of culture, and in the harmonious development of all his faculties and wants; and I have assigned to that class whose duty it is to watch over the progress and harmony of this development, a most honourable place in human society. ”

“ Rousseau did not penetrate on any side to the confines of human knowledge; he does not appear ever to have proposed such an investigation to himself. What truth he possessed, he founded immediately on his feelings; and his knowledge has therefore the faults common to all knowledge founded on mere undeveloped feeling, that it is partly uncertain, because man cannot render to himself a complete account of his feelings; that the true is mixed up with the untrue, because a judgment resting upon feeling alone regards as of like meaning things which are yet essentially different. ”

“ To him retrogression was progress, and that forsaken State of Nature the ultimate end which a now marred and perverted humanity must finally attain. Thus he did precisely that which we do, he laboured to advance humanity according to his own ideas, and to aid its progress towards its highest end. He did that precisely which he himself so bitterly censured; his actions stand in opposition to his principles. ”

“ She must henceforth and for ever retain him under her guardianship. The energy, ardour, and firm determination to war against and to subdue her, he has not taught him. Among good men he will be happy; but among bad,—and where is it that the majority are not bad?—he will suffer unspeakable misery. Thus Rousseau throughout depicted Reason at peace, but not in strife;—he weakened Sense, instead of strengthening Reason.
I have undertaken the present inquiry in order to solve the famous paradox which stood so directly opposed to our principles: but not for that purpose alone. ”

“ He who does feel it, ought to endeavour to release himself from it, by directing all his powers to the task of improving, as far as possible, all within his sphere and around him. And even supposing that his labours should prove fruitless, and he should see no use in their continuance, still the feeling of his own activity, the consciousness of his own power which he calls forth to the struggle against the general depravity, will cause him to forget this pain. Here Rousseau failed. ”

“ There can be no doubt that Rousseau acted honourably with men: he longed himself to live in that State of Nature which he so warmly recommended to others, and showed throughout every indication of this desire. ”

“ The struggle of reason against passion,—the victory, gradual and slow, gained only by exertion, labour, and pain,—that most interesting and instructive of all spectacles, he conceals from our view. His pupil is developed by himself alone. The teacher does little more than remove the obstructions to his growth, and leave the rest to the care of Nature. ”

“ Separated from the great world, and guided by his pure feeling and lively imagination, Rousseau had sketched a picture of society, and particularly of the Scholar-class, with whose labours he especially occupied himself, as they ought to be, and as they necessarily must and would be, if they followed the guidance of common feeling. ”

“ Had he allowed his feelings to influence the course of his inquiries, they would have brought him back to the right path from which they had first led him astray. To have erred less than he did, Rousseau must have possessed either more or less acuteness of intellect than he actually did possess; and so he who reads his works must, in order not to be led astray by them, possess either a much higher or a much lower degree of acuteness than he possessed; he must be either a complete thinker, or no thinker at all. ”

“ For every truth can be derived only from one fundamental principle. What the fundamental principle is, upon which each problem of human knowledge may be solved, it is the province of a fundamental philosophy to declare ”

“ Rousseau would not transplant men back into a State of Nature with respect to spiritual culture, but only with respect to independence of the desires of sense. And it is certainly true, that as man approaches nearer to the highest end of his existence, it must constantly become easier for him to satisfy his sensual wants; that his physical existence must cost him less labour and care ”

“ You will find them very different in reality from what your philosophy would have them to be. The nobler and better you are yourselves, the more painfully will you feel the experience which awaits you. ”

“ There is no salvation for man until this natural sluggishness is successfully combated, until he find all his pleasures and enjoyments in activity, and in activity alone. To that end pain is associated with the feeling of want. It should rouse us to activity.
This is the object of all pain; it is peculiarly the object of that pain which we experience at every view of the imperfection, depravity, and misery of our fellow men. He who does not feel this pain, this bitter indignation, is a mean-souled man. ”

“ Such a theory has been propounded by a man who has himself cultivated his mental faculties in a very high degree. With all the power which he acquired by this superior cultivation, he laboured, wherever it was possible, to convince mankind of the justice of his doctrines, to persuade them to return to that State of Nature which he so much commended. ”

“ Rousseau forgot that humanity can and ought to approach nearer to this state only by care, toil, and struggle. Nature is rude and savage without the hand of man: and it should be so, that thereby man may be forced to leave his natural state of inactivity, and elaborate her stores ”

“ He felt himself imprisoned, crushed down by manifold wants, and—what is indeed no great evil to the majority of men, but the bitterest oppression to such a man as he was,—he was often seduced from the path of rectitude and virtue by these wants. ”

“ To stand aloof and lament over the corruption of man, without stretching forth a hand to diminish it, is weak effeminacy; to cast reproach and bitter scorn on man, without showing him how he can become better, is unfriendly. ”

“ LECTURE V. EXAMINATION OF ROUSSEAU’S DOCTRINES CONCERNING THE INFLUENCE OF ART AND SCIENCE ON THE WELL-BEING OF MAN.
The combating of error is of no important advantage in the discovery of truth. If truth be once derived by just deduction from its essential principles, it follows without express refutation that everything opposed to it must necessarily be false ”

“ You are now learning, by philosophic inquiry, what the men ought to be with whom you have not as yet generally entered into any near, close, and indissoluble relations. You will soon come into closer relations with them. ”

“ He also found himself oppressed on every side by others, because he stood in the way of the satisfaction of their desires. Man does not do evil in vain and for no purpose, thought Rousseau, and we with him ”

“ But the consideration of opposite opinions is of great value in imparting distinct and clear views of discovered truth. In comparing truth with error, we are obliged to note with greater accuracy the distinctive marks of both ”