Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/287

 LECTURE XVII. CONCLUSION.

the preceding Lectures we have delineated the Present Age as a necessary part of the great World-Plan on which the Earthly Life of our Race is arranged, and have endeavoured to disclose its secret significance; we have sought to understand the phenomena of the Present by means of this Idea, to bring them forth as the necessary results of the Past, and to predict their immediate consequences in the Future;—and if we have succeeded in this our undertaking, we have then understood our Age. We have been engaged in these contemplations without thought of ourselves or of our own position. Speculation warns every inquirer, and with good reason, against this self-forgetfulness. To show the justice of this warning in our own case:—Should our view of the Present Age prove to have been a view taken from the standing-point of this Age itself, should the eye which has taken this view have been itself a product of the Age which it has surveyed, then has the Age borne witness to itself and such testimony must be set aside; and so far from having explored its significance, we have only added to the number of its phenomena a most superfluous and unproductive one. Whether this has been our position or not, can only be determined by a retrospect of our previous inquiry; and this retrospect can