Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/106

 in this,—that every man may judge of all things whether he understands them or not!’ Has any one, in the circle of a few friends perhaps, allowed an assertion to escape him which it may be supposed he would not willingly see published to the world? In a week or two the printing press is at work to announce the remarkable fact to the world and to posterity. The journals take a part on one side and on the other, carefully investigating and inquiring whether the assertion was actually made or not, before whom was it made, what were the exact words employed, and under what conditions the offender may be dismissed in the meantime with a partial punishment, or else be irretrievably condemned. He must stand the brunt; and it will be well for him if, at the end of a few years, he find his business forgotten in some new affair. Let no man smile at this;—for thereby he will only show that he has no sense of the high value of Public Opinion. But should any one who is summoned before the tribunal of this Public Opinion dare to despise its authority, then total perplexity takes possession of the minds of its representatives, and to the end of their lives they gaze in profound astonishment at the man who has had courage sufficient to scorn their jurisdiction. They have of a truth thought this which they say;—at least they have assumed the air of having thought it. How then can any reasonable man refuse to pay them that respectful submission which is their due?

The right to raise itself in thought to the conception of the Laws of Reason, free from all constraint of outward authority, is indeed the highest, inalienable right of Humanity:—it is the unchangeable vocation of the Earthly Life of the. But no man has a right to wander recklessly about in the empty domain of unsettled Opinion; for such a course is directly opposed to the distinctive character of Humanity, i.e. to Reason. Neither would any Age have such a right, were it not that this unsettled