Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/275

 Age. In the schools of Philosophy and Science, the popular teacher, the popular author, and the public opinion of the cultivated classes, are formed, and through these channels the influences of the schools spread themselves abroad, by teaching and example, among the People. The Philosophico-scientific character of the Third Age has been already set forth at the commencement of these lectures;—this, namely,—to accept nothing as really existing or obligatory but that which it can understand and clearly comprehend,—in which the Age is right; and further,—to connect therewith mere empirical and sensuous Experience as its sole measure of the Comprehensible,—in which the Age is wrong. It is quite clear, that by means of the prevalence of these principles everything mysterious and incomprehensible must be banished from Religion; and—since the fear of God, as well as the means of propitiating him, are founded on the Incomprehensibility and Unsearchableness of the Divine Counsels, and we can therefore be made acquainted with these means only by direct Revelation,—that everything awful in Religion, as well as blind faith and unquestioning obedience in its concerns, must wholly disappear. An Age, therefore, which is formed upon those principles, and thoroughly penetrated by them, will no longer be moved by the fear of God, nor employ any ostensible and pretentious means of propitiating him.

But is this fear of God, and these efforts to propitiate him by means of mysterious devices,—are these Religion and Christianity? By no means:—they are Superstitions, remnants of Heathenism which have mixed themselves up with Christianity, and have not yet been wholly thrust out from it;—and these remnants are wholly destroyed by the Philosophy of the Age wherever it has free play. Along with them True Christianity itself is, not indeed destroyed,—for except in individuals it has never yet attained a public and recognised