Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/165

 that all things were not, of necessity, such as they were with them; but might be otherwise having indeed discovered them to be otherwise in reality; and the Earth-born, after they had been awakened to conscious intelligence, had a great deal even more wonderful to record. In this conflict of Culture with Barbarism, the germs of all Ideas and all Science,—except Religion, which is as old as the world itself, and is inseparable from the existence of the world,—unfolded themselves, as the power and means of leading Barbarism to Culture.

Far from History being able reasonably to raise her voice on the subject of her own birth, all that has now been set forth is presupposed in the mere existence of History. Inferences from a state of things amid which it has had its beginning, as to what has preceded that state, especially inferences from the Myths which are already in actual existence, and in so far have themselves become facts,—particularly when such inferences are in accordance with Logic,—should be thankfully accepted. But let us bear in mind that they are inferences and not History;—and should we desire to examine more closely the form of the inference, let us not be scared back by the bugbear—Fact. Let this be our first incidental observation; and let the second be as follows:—Every one who is capable of a survey of History as a whole,—which however is always rarer than a knowledge of its individual curiosities; and who in particular is able to comprehend what is universal, eternal, and unchanging in it, might in such a survey obtain a clear view of some of the most important problems of History;—for example, how the existence of races of men, differing so much from each other in colour and physical structure, is possible;—why it is that at all times, down even to the present day, civilization is always spread by means of foreign incomers, who encounter aboriginal inhabitants in a state of greater or lesser Barbarism;—whence arises