Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/232

 highest officers of their State, these too necessarily fell under the general discipline of the Ecclesiastics, who were consequently incited to exercise their office towards these persons with a special and notorious zeal, which necessarily produced the most pernicious consequences on the authority and freedom of the Government. These Ecclesiastics themselves were by their mental tendencies shut out from any sound political views; and had scarcely any other conception of the things of this world than as means for the propagation of their faith, and the maintenance of what they called its purity;—they were therefore incapable either of wisely guiding the Rulers whom they had deprived of freedom, or of governing in their room; and thus nothing else could ensue but the total enervation and final destruction of the Kingdoms in which they held sway.

Should there ever again arise a State to which this pernicious influence might prove innocuous, and which should be able to repel its insidious advances; then must such a State be itself established upon Religion, in order thereby to counteract an influence which was able only to destroy whatever existed without its aid. In consequence of this necessity of returning to the original and native principles of the State, Religion was also compelled to fall back upon her own principles and to reform herself within her own domain. She was obliged, in the first place, to succeed in converting the elements of which the new State was composed, in order that both Citizens and Rulers might be her own spiritual creation. In this business of conversion she had not, as formerly, to do with superstitious, terrified men, who, full of hereditary dread of the Gods, were ready upon any terms to throw themselves into her bosom; for similar causes would again have produced similar effects: but she had to do with those who in their open character and simple relations,—for it is only the complexity of relations produced by partial Culture