Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/295

 sixteen or seventeen hours have been to you not true but mere empty and vacant Time.

To True and Real Time belongs everything which becomes the necessary principle, foundation and cause of new and hitherto non-existent phenomena in Time; for the first characteristic of true Life is to create other Life from itself. That which by means of these inquiries might become such a principle was the ruling tendency and practice of contemplating all things without exception from the Religious point of view. Now it is impossible that this principle should have been implanted within us, for the first time, by means of the contemplations which have occupied us for a few hours of this winter. In the first place, we have already remarked that this principle cannot be communicated to man from without, but must have its root originally within his own being, and has actually such an inward existence in all men without exception;—and in the second place, we have not been able to avail ourselves of nearly the whole of the means which might have been employed to awaken and call forth this principle. The whole artificial training of the school, the systematic rise and overthrow of each objection, the gradual upturning of every branch of error by the roots; further, the profound and lengthened course of study, and the artificial development of the power of thought, which are presupposed in these things;—all these could not here be employed; and thus, the Religious Sense could not here be implanted, nor even for the first time awakened and called forth. It was presupposed that this Religious Sense had already made its appearance, and manifested its genial and invigorating influence in all the minds who have taken part in our inquiries, and only slumbered under the concealment of the numerous and incessant occupations and distractions of life and its every-day occurrences. To this sense, asleep but not dead, we were able confidently to appeal,