Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/135

 that purpose, and a survey of it recorded there, partly for the use of cotemporaries, and partly for future history. Something similar to this was said in our description of the Third Age as the function of the Literary Journals and Magazines. Thus if we describe how such a Review would be executed in the Age of Reason as Knowledge, we shall at the same time declare how a Literary Journal ought to be conducted, if such Journals must exist; and from the contrast, it may also become obvious why such Journals, in their common form, are good for nothing, and can be good for nothing. To complete the antithesis between our last lecture and our present one, we must now proceed to this description.

The scientific position of every point of Time must manifest itself according to the Idea which we have already announced; and the supposition is that it will so manifest itself in the works of the Time. These lie open to every eye; and all who are interested in the question which we have proposed can answer it, without our aid, by reference to the same source from which we, without their help, have answered it. We see not to what end our assistance is needful here. If we would make our aid necessary, we must do something which others either cannot do at all, or cannot do without some specific labour of which we can relieve them. We cannot again inform the Reader of what the Author himself has said; for the Author has already said this for himself, and the Reader may satisfactorily learn it from him. What we must declare for him, is precisely that which the Author has not said, but from which he has drawn everything which he has said; we must lay bare what the Author himself really is, perhaps unconsciously to himself, and how all which he has said has become to him such as it is;—we must extract the spirit from his letter. If this spirit in the individual be also the spirit of the Time, and if we have made it manifest in any one instance