Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/39

 make this Age their sport, that each individual imagines that he can exist, live, think, and act for himself, and believes that he himself is the thinking principle of his thoughts; whereas in truth he is but a single ray of the universal and necessary Thought. I shall not by any means be surprised if it should appear to you that in making this assertion I have uttered a monstrous paradox. I know too well that such an opinion must arise, because we can only speak of the present Age to the present Age;—and, if I do not err, the fundamental character of the Age consists in this, that it knows not the principle of which I have spoken, or holds it, when announced, in the highest degree incredible and absurd. This principle is, however, absolutely incontrovertible upon any other ground than that of the mere feeling of personality; the existence of which as a fact of consciousness we by no means deny, since we ourselves experience it as well as others. But we do most earnestly deny the validity of this feeling when the question respects truth and real existence, in the firm conviction that such questions must be decided upon quite other grounds than the deceptive revelations of consciousness; and we are perfectly able, in the proper time and place, to justify this our denial upon decisive grounds. Here, however, we can only announce this principle, and historically communicate it to you; and it is necessary to do this, because only by means of it can we separate ourselves from the Age and rise superior to it; and no one can truly characterize the Age, or comprehend its characteristics, who does not so raise himself above it. Hence I must entreat you to accept this principle in the meantime upon trust, until I shall be able to lead you, in a popular way, at least to a tacit admission of it, which I shall do in my next lecture.

It is only by and to mere Earthly and Finite perception, that this one and homogeneous Life of Reason is broken up and divided into separate individual persons; the ground of which division, as well as its form and mode, are to be