Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/105

 value, and that any one can be interested in knowing how we, important personages as we are, look upon the matter; and before the tribunal of this mode of thought no one has a right to open his mouth before he is thoroughly satisfied that his speech shall be not of himself, but the utterance of the Pure Reason within him; and that therefore every one who comprehends him, and desires to maintain the rank of a reasonable being, will recognise his utterance as true and genuine.

Understanding, for its own sake, possesses the highest value for this Age:—this Understanding has therefore supreme Authority, and becomes the first and primitive Authority, limited by no other. Hence arises the all-ruling idea of Intellectual Freedom,—freedom of Scientific judgment and of public opinion. Let it be made manifest to a true son of this Age that what he has produced is absurd, ridiculous, immoral, and corrupt:—‘That is nothing,’ he replies; ‘I have thought it,—of my own self I have created it,—and thought of itself is always some merit for it costs some labour; and man must be at liberty to think what he pleases:’—and, truly, against this one can have nothing further to say. Let it be shown to another that he is ignorant of the very first principle of an Art or a Science upon the results of which he has pronounced at great length, and that the whole domain to which it belongs is quite beyond his knowledge:—‘Am I thereby tacitly to understand,’ he replies, ‘that I ought not to have exercised my judgment under these circumstances? Surely those who say this have no conception of the Freedom of Judgment which belongs of right to men of learning. If a man were in every case to study and understand that upon which he pronounces a judgment the unconditional Liberty of Thought would thereby be much limited and circumscribed; and there would be found exceedingly few who could venture to pronounce an opinion;—whereas the Freedom of Judgment consists