Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/276

 ,—but the Age is thereby rendered incapable of comprehending True Christianity or of introducing it into the world.

Does any one lament this downfall of Superstition as the decay of Religion?—then he violates the true use of language, and laments over that in which he ought to rejoice, and which is indeed a brilliant proof of the advancement of our Age. On what account, then, are these lamentations made? Since the thing which has fallen has nothing in itself to recommend it, it must be only the outward consequences of its fall that are deplored. In so far as these lamentations do not proceed from the priests themselves,—(in this connexion we may call them priests without fear of misapprehension),—whose grief at the loss of their dominion over the minds of men we can well understand,—but from the politicians, then they may be resolved into this, that Government has thereby become more difficult and expensive. The fear of the Gods was an excellent resource for an imperfect Government; it was a convenient thing to watch the doings of the subjects through the eyes of the Divinity, where the Government either could not or would not exercise this surveillance itself; the Judge was spared the exercise of his own sagacity and penetration, when, by threats of relentless damnation, he could induce the accused to communicate to him willingly the information he desired to possess; and the Evil Spirit performed, without reward, the services for which, at later times, Judges and Police had to be paid.

To declare frankly what we clearly perceive to be true, let us here say that, even if the maintenance of such a method of facilitating Government were allowable, which it is not, yet this increase of the burden of Government is no evil, but a precious good in which Humanity at large must sooner or later become partaker. Government itself is an Art founded on the laws of Reason, which ought not to be prosecuted at random, but must, on the contrary,