Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/289

 that those to whom they are addressed cannot make them for themselves. As I have hitherto, I believe, kept myself free from this sort of eloquence,—which indeed is permitted only to one class to which I do not belong,—I hope I shall continue to avoid it, even to the end.

I have said that we shall to-day take a retrospect of our previous inquiry, and of the theory which has been its result—our theory not mine as I have already explained;—especially in order that we may be assured that this theory is not itself a product of the Present Age, the influence of the Age upon us being hidden from our view. To this end I maintain, that this theory is assuredly no product of our own Age—if, in the first place, it be not a product of any Age whatever, but lies beyond all Time; and also (since in that case it might prove absolutely empty and without significance, and so disappear in mere vacuity and nothingness)—if, in the second place, it become the root and principle of living vitality in a New Age.

In the first place, that we may be able to determine whether our now completed theory does actually lie beyond all Time, let us inquire what has been the nature of this theory, considered in its essential elements, and to what chief department of human thought it has belonged? I answer:—It was a Religious Theory; all our contemplations were Religious contemplations, and our view of things, and the eye which embraced that view, were Religious.

According to the thought which, directly or indirectly, distinctly or obscurely, has animated all our previous discourses, and, in our last discourse especially, has been considered on all sides;—according to this thought, I say, consists in regarding and recognising all Earthly Life as a necessary development of the one, original, perfectly good and perfectly blessed Divine Life. Now, it is first of all quite clear that this view