Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/154

 a priori in a few sentences, and proved to have been attainable in other ways,—this phase of the Wonderful not having yet appeared when they were young;—the more welcome to those who have not yet entered upon this path of study, but now stand at the point whence according to former usage they must enter upon it, will be the promise of being safely lifted over it in the course of a few paragraphs. Should there, after all, no miracle ensue, as is the common fate of such magic arts; should no new empirical knowledge arise, and the Faithful remain exactly as wise or as ignorant as they were before;—should it be obvious, at least to every one who is not blind, that whatever is essential in any particular instance actually brought forward has not been deduced a priori, nor even attained by any course of reasoning, but has been already known by means of previous experiment, and is now only compressed into an allegorical form, in which compression the pretended deduction consists;—should the wonder-worker himself neither satisfy the demand which must of necessity be made upon him to authenticate his higher mission by at least one fulfilled prophecy, nor even produce, as he ought, a single experiment never before made either by himself or others in some region unattainable by means of inference from previous experiment, the results of which, distinctly announced by himself beforehand, shall be found coincident with its actual fulfilment, but should proceed, like all false prophets, to prophesy the result a priori after its accomplishment has taken place;—should all this unquestionably have occurred, yet will the assured Faith of the Adept never waver;—to-day indeed the process has not succeeded, but on the seventh, or on the ninth day, it will infallibly succeed.

To this stimulus of applause, there is added another very powerful one. The human mind, left to itself without discipline or education, would neither be idle nor industrious;—were a middle state between these two discovered, that