Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/131

 their weapons, and I know that upon their own ground they are invincible; but I also know my own theory, which I have now communicated to you, too well not to perceive that it altogether supersedes the whole present Theology, with all its pretensions; and that whatever is valuable in the inquiries of these men, has reference only to the departments of historical and philological learning, without possessing any influence upon Religion or Happiness;—and thus I cannot join issue with the Theologian who desires to remain a Theologian rather than a Teacher of the People.

So much for our first business,—to exhibit historically the way in which that state of Literature and Science, already described as characteristic of the Third Age, has actually arisen. Now to our second task,—to show how this Literary and Scientific world ought to be constituted.

In the first place:—All the existing relations of actual life, which can only be superseded in and by the Age of the perfect Art of Reason, demand that only a few shall devote their lives to Science, and by far the majority to other pursuits;—that thus the distinction between the Scholar, or let us rather say between the Learned, and the Unlearned, must still subsist for a long period. Both have yet to raise themselves to the real substance of Knowledge, to the true creative Reason; and the formalism of mere unreasoning Conception must be wholly got rid of. The people, in particular, must be raised to Pure Christianity, such as we have described it above, as the only medium through which at first Ideas can be communicated to them. In this respect both parties, Learned as well as Unlearned, are in the same position. They are separated in the following way:—the Learned find Reason itself, and all its modifications, in a system of connected and consecutive Thought; to them, the Universe of Reason, as we have elsewhere expressed it, reveals itself in pure Thought as such. This knowledge they then communicate to the