Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/257

 LECTURE XV. PUBLIC MORALITY OF THE PRESENT AGE.

begin this lecture with a remark, which properly closes the inquiry we brought to a termination in our last address, and opens that which we have to enter upon today, and is thus the point of transition from the one to the other;—a remark, the import of which we have all along tacitly assumed, but which we now desire clearly and distinctly to set forth.

From Christianity we have deduced the whole character of Modern Time, and the form and manner of the development of this character. But everything which becomes the Principle of Phenomena is, on that very account, lost in the Phenomena themselves; becomes invisible to mere outward sense, and is only recognisable to the piercing eye of reflection. Thus in so far as Christianity has become a true Principle, it is no longer present in clear consciousness to the men of the Age; on the contrary, that which they regard as Christianity has, precisely on that account, never become a Principle, nor is it truly accepted and received into the inward, essential, and peculiar Life of the Age. Christianity was to us synonymous with the One True Religion; and we carefully distinguished it from the various accidental modifications which this True Religion received