Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/148

 opposition to the Life in the Idea; but that it may act in conformity with it, requires a specific determination of the will moved thereto by desire. Thus Mysticism is still Speculation; it does not, however, comprehend the Race as such but only Individuality, because it proceeds only from the Individual and refers only to that whereon the life of the Individual depends, namely, to Physical Nature,—and it is thus necessarily Speculation founded on Nature (Natur-Spekulation.) Hence the Life in the Idea, which the uneducated man presumes to call Mysticism, is in reality very widely and distinctly separated from Mysticism. We have already sufficiently distinguished Mysticism from true and genuine Speculation; but in order that we may be able to distinguish this true and genuine Speculation from its opposite,—that of the Mystic, with reference to the Philosophy of Nature (Natur-Philosophie),—we ought to be already in possession of the former, and this is not the business of the unlearned public. Upon this matter,—and therefore upon the ultimate principles of Nature,—no true Scholar will think of communicating with the general public; the Speculative theory of Nature presupposes scientific culture, and can only be comprehended by the scientific intellect; and the general and unlearned public never stands in need of it. But with respect to that whereon the true Scholar can and ought to communicate with the general public,—with respect to Ideas,—there is an infallible test whereby this public may determine for itself whether any doctrine which is presented to it is, or is not, mere Mysticism. Let it be asked,—‘Has this doctrine a direct and immediate bearing on action, or does it rest on a fixed and immovable constitution of things?’ Thus, for example, the question which I put to you at the beginning of these lectures, and upon the assumed answer to which, the whole of my subsequent discourses have proceeded as their true principle:—this question,