Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/164

 only a sufficient range of centuries, to produce at last a Leibnitz or a Kant as the descendant of an Ourang-Outang.

History takes cognisance only of the New,—the Wonderful;—that which may be contrasted with what has gone before, and what shall follow it. On this account there was no History among the Normal People, and there is no History of them. Under the guidance of their Instinct, one day passed away like another; and one individual life like all the rest. Everything shaped itself spontaneously according to order and morality. There could even be no Science or Art; Religion alone adorned their existence, and gave the simple uninformed mind a relation to the Eternal. As little could there be a History among the Earth born Savages; for with them, likewise, one day passed away like another,—with only this difference, that on one day they found food in abundance while on another they could obtain nothing; prostrated the one day from indulgence and on the next from enervation;—to awaken again, in either case, to the same unchanging round which led to no result.

Had things remained in this state; had the absolute Culture,—which however did not look upon itself as Culture but only as Nature,—remained separate from the surrounding Barbarism, then no History could have arisen; and, what is still more important, the end of the existence of the Human Race could not have been attained. The Normal People must therefore, by some occurrence or other, have been driven away from their habitations, all access to which was thenceforth cut off; and must have been dispersed over the seats of Barbarism. Now for the first time could the process of the free development of the Human Race begin; and with it, History,—the record of the Unexpected and the New,—which accompanies such a process. For now, for the first time, the dispersed descendants of the Normal People perceived with astonishment