Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/199

 members, each of whom shall acquire only one branch, but acquire that one well;—these powers shall be armed with the knowledge of Nature and of Art, and with convenient implements and machinery, and thus be raised superior to every power of Nature; so that all the mere earthly purposes of man may be attained without superfluous expenditure of time or labour, and sufficient opportunity be left remaining for him to turn his attention upon inward and supersensual things. This is the purpose of the Human Race as such.

In the State, the greater the proportion of the time and power of its Citizens which it requires and must lay claim to for the purpose of its own support, and the more thoroughly it seeks to interpenetrate all its members and make them the instruments of this purpose,—the more must it endeavour to multiply and extend the means of physical life, by promoting that dominion of Man over Nature which we have already described, in order that it may thereby secure the existence of its Citizens;—it must therefore accept all the before-mentioned purposes of the Race, and assume them as its own, for the sake of its own purpose. It will consequently,—to adopt the common enumeration of these purposes,—strive to quicken Industry; to improve Agriculture; to carry to their highest perfection Manufactures, Commerce, and Machinery; and to encourage discoveries in the Mechanical Arts and in Natural Science. Let it be believed that it does all this only with the view of adding to its revenue, and of being enabled to maintain a larger army;—let even the Rulers themselves, at least for the most part, be unconscious of any higher design; it nevertheless promotes, though without its own knowledge, the purpose which we have indicated as that of the Human Race as such.

The outward purpose of this dominion of the Race over Nature is, as we have said in one of our first lectures, a