Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/141

 Now this foundation, which is to be the basis of mere appearance, is for those philosophies, however much more incorrectly they may further define it, always fixed Being, which is just what it is and nothing more, chained in itself and bound to its own essence. Death, therefore, and alienation from originality, which are within them, stand forth before their eyes as well. Because they themselves are unable by any effort to rise out of themselves to life as such, but always need a prop and a support for their free upward flight, they do not get beyond this support in their thinking, which is the image of their life. That which is not Something is to them inevitably Nothing, for their eyes see nothing else between that Being in which growth has ceased and the Nothing, because their life has nothing else. Their feeling, which is their sole possible authority, seems to them infallible. If anyone does not acknowledge this support of theirs, they are far from assuming that to him life alone is enough; on the contrary, they believe that he merely lacks the cleverness to perceive the support, which they have no doubt supports him too, and the capacity to raise himself by his exertions to their high point of view. It is, therefore, futile and impossible to instruct them; one would have to construct them, and to construct them differently, if one could. Now, in this matter German philosophy of the present day is not German, but a product of the foreign spirit.

92. True philosophy, on the other hand, which has been perfected in itself and has penetrated beyond appearance to the very kernel of appearance, proceeds from the one, pure, divine life—life simply as such, which it remains for all eternity, and always one—but not from this or that kind of life. It sees how it is only in appearance that this life ceaselessly closes and opens again,