Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/265

 And here once more we have attained a point where I must appeal to your own judgment, and leave it to yourselves to compare the Past with the Present in this respect, to determine at what point our own Age has arrived, and in what direction it must now proceed onwards.

The inquiry which we have thus brought to a close, has afforded us an opportunity of ascertaining and pointing out in what positive public Good Manners consist. They consist in habitually regarding each individual, without exception, as a member of the Race, and in desiring to be so regarded by him; in treating him as possessing that character, and in desiring to be so treated by him in return. To regard and to be regarded, to treat and to be treated in return, I have said;—for both are inseparably united, and he who does not desire the latter will not fulfil the former condition. He to whom it is a matter of indifference what others think of him, and how they treat him, in those matters as to which no course of duty is prescribed by the Law, far from accepting their judgment as the judgment of the Race, despises them and casts them from him as worthy of no consideration. It is indeed unquestionably true, that any one by his own bad conduct may place others in such a position that they can entertain towards him no feeling save that of most profound contempt, and they would be quite justified in doing so;—but this contempt must not be an original habit of mind; it must be called forth and deserved, and in that case clear conviction takes the place of mere habit.

The chief feature in our conception of Good Manners as above set forth is this,—that every individual, without exception, merely as such, and on account of his bearing the human form, ought, in the event of his not having forfeited this character by his own misdeeds, to be recognised as a member and representative of the Race;—or, in other words, that the Original Equality of all men ought to be the predominant and fundamental idea in all our