Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/73

 dim feeling can also, as an unusual exception to the rule, pass beyond the personal self, and comprehend the fundamental impulse as a desire for a dimly-felt different order of things. Thence arises the life, adequately described by us elsewhere, which, exalted above self-seeking, is motived by ideas, dim indeed but none the less ideas, and in which reason rules as an instinct. Such comprehension of the fundamental impulse merely by dim feeling is the characteristic of the first class of men, who are trained, not by education, but by their own selves; this class in turn consists of two species, which are distinct for some reason that is incomprehensible and quite beyond the art of man to discover.

Clear knowledge is the second kind of consciousness, which does not, as a rule, develop of itself, but must be carefully fostered in the community. If the fundamental impulse of man were embraced in this principle, it would produce a second class of men quite different from the first. Such knowledge, which embraces fundamental love itself, does not leave us cold and indifferent, as indeed other knowledge can, but its object is loved above everything, for that object is but the interpretation and translation of our original love itself. Other knowledge embraces something alien, which remains alien and leaves us cold; this knowledge embraces the knower himself and his love, and he loves it. Now, although it is the same original love appearing only in different forms which spurs on both classes, yet disregarding this circumstance we can say that man is governed in the one case by dim feelings, in the other by clear knowledge.

Now, that such clear knowledge shall be a direct incentive in life, and shall be capable of being relied on with certainty depends, as has been said, on this, that the real true love of man is to be interpreted by it, that