Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/141

 the Unknown itself, as the limit of the Known, and as the only possible pledge that the domain of the Known is exhausted, must be comprehended; and that in all Times, and as the only sufficient substratum of the Time, there must be a then Unknown,—known only as the Unknown; but at no Time an absolute Incomprehensible. This principle of absolute Incomprehensibility is thus much more directly opposed to Knowledge, than even the principle of the Intelligibility of all things through the conceptions of mere sensuous Experience. Finally, this principle of Incomprehensibility, as such, is not a remnant of any former Age, as is obvious from what we have already said on this point. The absolute Incomprehensible of Heathen and Jewish antiquity,—the arbitrary God, never to be understood but always to be feared, with whom man could only by good fortune come to terms,—far from having been sought out by these Ages, was imposed upon them by necessity, and in opposition to their own will, and they would gladly have been delivered from this conception had that been possible. The Incomprehensible of the Christian Church, again, was accepted as true,—not on account of its being incomprehensible, but because it existed in the Written Word and in the Traditions and Doctrines of the Church, although it had accidentally turned out to be incomprehensible. The maxim of which we now speak, on the contrary, sets up the Incomprehensible as the Highest, in its own character of incomprehensibility, and even on account of its incomprehensibility; and it is thus a wholly new and unprecedented phenomenon peculiar to the Third Age.

When the matter does not end in this mere acceptance of the Incomprehensible generally,—so that it might be left to each man to determine for himself what is incomprehensible to him;—but when besides this, as might be expected from the dogmatic Spirit of the Age, a specific