Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/298

 to address such a command to the material sun when it stands in the noon-day heavens. It does this without our bidding; if it shine not, then it has not arisen. At its uprising darkness, and the brood of spectres and phantasms which are born of darkness, vanish of themselves. It is in vain to say to darkness,—‘Let there be Light!’—no Light can come forth from it, for there is none within it. As vain is it to say to man lost in the Transitory and Perishable,—‘Raise thine eyes to the Eternal!’—he has no eye for the Eternal;—his eye is itself transitory and perishable, and reflects only the Transitory and Perishable. But let the Light itself burst forth, then the darkness becomes visible, retires, and draws off like shadows across the field. The darkness is the thoughtlessness, the frivolity, the fickleness of men. Where the Light of Religion has arisen, there is no longer need to warn men against these things, or to struggle against them;—they have already vanished, and their place is no longer known. Are they still there?—then the Light of Religion has assuredly not arisen, and all warning and exhortation is in vain.

Thus,—the proposed criterion being applied in the first place negatively,—the answer to the question, Whether these contemplations in which we have been engaged have belonged to vacant or to True Time? must depend upon this,—Whether thoughtlessness, frivolity, and fickleness, have disappeared from our Life, and continue to disappear therefrom more and more?

Pure thoughtlessness,—that is, mute and blind surrender of ourselves to the stream of phenomena, without even entertaining the thought of any unity or foundation therein,—is mere Animalism, and thereby possesses a certain conformity to Nature which we must allow to have its value. It is seldom that man is so fortunate as to possess it. Those questionings after unity still present themselves and demand their reply. He who