Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/33

 Art and perfect Freedom according to Reason:—and, in order to impress these different Epochs firmly upon your memory by means of a sensuous representation, we made use of the universally known picture of Paradise. Further, he must understand that the Present Age, to which especially our present purpose refers, must fall within one or other of these five Epochs; that we have now to set forth the fundamental Idea of this Epoch, distinguishing it from the other four, which, except for the purposes of illustrating our own, we may here lay out of view; and that from this fundamental Idea we must deduce the peculiar phenomena of the Age as its necessary consequences. At this point our second lecture begins.

And so let us set forth with declaring at what point of the whole Earthly life of the Race we place our Present Age. I, for my part, hold that the Present Age stands precisely in the middle of Earthly Time; and as we may characterize the two first Epochs of our scheme (in which Reason rules first directly as Instinct, and then indirectly as Instinct through Authority) as the one Epoch of the dominion of blind or unconscious Reason;—and in like manner the two last Epochs in our scheme (in which Reason first appears as Knowledge, and then, by means of Art, enters upon the government of Life) as the one Epoch of the dominion of seeing or conscious Reason;—so the Present Age unites the ends of two essentially different Worlds,—the World of Darkness and that of Light,—the World of Constraint and that of Freedom,—without itself belonging to either of them. In other words, the Present Age, according to my view of it, stands in that Epoch which in my former lecture I named the, and which I characterized as the Epoch of Liberation—directly from the external ruling Authority,—indirectly from the power of Reason as Instinct, and generally from Reason in any form; the Age of absolute indifference towards all truth, and of entire and unrestrained licentiousness:—the State of completed Sinfulness.