Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/47

 only an invention of certain idle individuals called Philosophers.

So much for the general delineation of the Third Age, the individual features of which we shall set forth and examine in detail in our future addresses. Only one other characteristic we shall notice at present, which inasmuch as it affects the form of the whole Epoch, cannot be passed over here;—this, namely,—that this Age, in its best representatives, is so confident, so firmly assured of the truth of its views, that in this respect it is not surpassed even by the certainty of scientific conviction. It looks down with unspeakable pity and compassion upon those earlier Ages in which men were still so weak-minded as to allow themselves to be seduced from pleasures which were offered to their immediate enjoyment by a spectre which they named Virtue, and by a dream of a super-sensual world;—upon those Ages of darkness and superstition, when they, the representatives of a new Age, had not yet appeared,—had not yet fathomed and thoroughly laid open the depths of the human heart,—had not yet made the great and astounding discovery, and loudly proclaimed and universally promulgated it,—that this heart is at bottom nothing but a base puddle. It does not oppose, but only compassionates and good-naturedly smiles at those who, living in it, yet reject its opinions; and calmly settles itself in the philanthropic hope that they too may one day raise themselves to the same point of view, when they shall have been matured by age and experience; or when they shall have studied, as thoroughly as its own representatives have done, that which it calls History. But here, although this is lost upon those representatives, Knowledge is their master, inasmuch as the latter perfectly comprehends its opponents' mode of thought, can reconstruct it from its separate parts, is able to restore it, should it unfortunately be lost to the world, and even finds it to be perfectly just when considered from its proper point of view. Thus, were we