Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/103

 a systematic and tabular code of dogmatics under the name of a catechism;—is this, I say, found to be so?—then experience makes good that which we have said. Should other maxims of popular Education here and there make their appearance, and even be in part carried out, this is but the reaction:—the former is the rule, without which indeed no reaction could take place.

It is impossible that these influences, directed upon the Age on all sides and from every quarter, should entirely fail of their purpose. Every individual, even the most insignificant and least cultivated, will in some measure acquire an independent consciousness and knowledge of himself; that is, since the enlightenment of the Age is throughout negative, he will by means of reflection raise himself above something which has been taught him in his youth, and will no longer be restrained by many things which before restrained him. And thus does man recognise himself as Man, attain to independent thought, and the whole Age transforms itself into a fixed camp of Formal Knowledge,—in which, indeed, many and various degrees of rank are to be found, but where each brings his contribution to the common armoury.

I trust that no one here will so far misunderstand what I have said, as to suppose that I unconditionally condemn the characteristics of this Age which we have now adduced, and thereby attach myself to a party which has already appeared in many shapes, and lately in that of Philosophy also, and which in every shape it has assumed has rightly borne the name of Obscuranti. Were the Knowledge of the Third Age Knowledge of the right sort, it should in that case deserve no blame for its striving to reach all men of every class. Rather do those representatives of the Age, who desire to retain their wisdom to themselves, and will not allow it to be spread forth among the masses, only exhibit their inconsistency on a new side. The Age which succeeds the Third,—that of True