Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/278

 joining in the lamentations over the decay of Religion in our Age, I hold this rather to be the character of the Age,—that it would be more ready than any other to receive and appreciate True Religion when presented to it. The empty and ineffectual babble of Free-thinking has had time enough to utter itself in all possible ways;—it has uttered itself and we have listened to it;—and on this side there is nothing new and nothing better to be said than what has been said already. We are weary of it; we feel its emptiness and its perfect nothingness with reference to that Feeling of the Eternal which can never be wholly uprooted from our souls. This Feeling remains, and urgently demands its rightful exercise. A more manly Philosophy has since then attempted to silence this Feeling by asserting the claims of another,—that of Absolute Morality,—under the name of the Categorical Imperative. Many powerful minds have accepted this principle, and rested satisfied with it: but this can endure only for a time, for precisely on account of a kindred feeling being cultivated does that which is unsatisfied feel more strongly the want of its satisfaction. Let Truth at last present itself to such a mind;—then, just because it has been inactive, and has already passed through so many errors, will it the more keenly discern and the more cordially accept the Truth which is now offered to its view. That such Truth will one day present itself to the public mind we may securely predict; for it is already prepared in the secret workshops of Philosophy although still in the obscurity of formula,—and already exists in the primitive records of Christianity although as yet not understood. How, and by what means it shall be introduced into the world we must leave to Time, looking forward with quiet confidence, and not expecting to see the harvest ready for the reaper while as yet the seed is but being sown.

Wherein, then, does this True Religion consist? Perhaps I shall be able to describe it most clearly if I show what it