Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/299

 cannot enter upon the inquiry, has no alternative but to harden himself against this impulse, and assume, of his own will, as his true wisdom and the ruling maxim of his life, that absolute thoughtlessness which Nature has denied him as a natural condition. There is no lack of distinguished appellations under which this maxim may be entertained:—Common Sense of Mankind, Scepticism, Struggle against Fanaticism and Superstition, &c. According to these doctrines, the animal is the true Philosopher and Sage; folly belongs to man, and consists in demanding a foundation and a reason of the visible. This folly the wise man subdues as well as he can, and thus by art brings himself back to the condition of the beast. But should these maxims, with all their distinguished appellations, prove unable to subdue this impulse which demands a secure foundation for our knowledge, then other means are sought to put it to silence. We pretend to rally ourselves on making this effort, and to laugh at ourselves for indulging in this folly, while it is in truth the effort itself which we try to make ridiculous, in order that we may thereby take revenge upon ourselves for having suffered this impulse to surprise and lay hold of us, and also in order that others may not believe us capable of such weakness. We fly from no society more willingly than from our own; and that we may never be left alone with ourselves we endeavour to fill up with mere amusement every portion of time unemployed by those occupations which already keep us from ourselves. This condition is unnatural. Children may by nature desire play because their powers are not yet ripe for earnest employment:—but when grown men can do nothing but play, then this is not for the sake of play itself, but because there is something else which they would willingly forget. ‘Does an earnest thought come in thy way, which thou wouldst not entertain? Let it alone and pursue the