Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/282

 whole being in the original fountain of all Life, and flowing forth with him, and inseparable from him, in one eternal stream. What the Moral Man calls Duty and Law,—what is this to him? The most spiritual bloom of Life,—his element in which alone he can breathe. He wills and can do nothing else than this;—all else is to him misery and death. To him the commanding “Thou shalt” comes too late; before it can command he has already resolved, and cannot resolve otherwise. As all external Law vanishes before Morality, so before Religion the internal Law also disappears; the Lawgiver in our breast is silent, for Will, Desire, Love, and Blessedness, have already superseded the Law. The Moral Man often finds it difficult to perform his Duty; the sacrifice of his deepest desires and his most cherished feelings is demanded of him. He performs it notwithstanding:—it must be done; he subdues his feelings, and stifles his agony. The question, Wherefore is there need of this suffering, and whence arises this struggle between the desires which have been implanted in him and the commands of a Law from which he cannot escape?—this question he dares not permit himself to entertain; he must offer himself up with mute and blind obedience, for only under the condition of such obedience is the offering genuine. For the Religious Man this question has been once and for ever solved. That which thus strives against our Will, and which is so unwilling to die, is imperfect Life; which, even because it is Life, struggles for continued existence, but must cease to be as soon as its place is occupied by a higher and nobler Life. ‘Those desires which I must sacrifice,’ thinks the Religious Man, ‘are not my desires; they are desires which are directed against me and my higher existence; they are my foes which cannot be destroyed too soon. The pain which they cause is not my pain, but the pain of a nature which has conspired against me; it is not the agonies of death, but the pangs of a