Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/48

 to speak in the name of Knowledge, the supposed impregnability of the mode of thought which we have now described arises precisely in this way;—that, considered from the point of view where its advocates are placed, it is perfectly just; and however frequently they may reexamine the chain of their conclusions they will never discover any break in its sequence. If there be absolutely nothing but the sensuous existence of Individuality, without any higher life of the Race; then there can be no other source of knowledge but Experience, for we are obviously informed concerning this sensuous existence only by Experience; and just on that account every other pretended source of knowledge, and whatever may flow there from, must of necessity be a mere dream and phantom of the brain;—whereby indeed is left unexplained the actual possibility of such dreaming, and of so conjuring out of the brain what in reality the brain does not contain; from which explanation, however, our representatives wisely abstain, satisfied with the experience that such dreams are. And that there actually is nothing except this sensuous individual existence, they know very well from this;—that however often and deeply they have fathomed the abysses of their own being, they have never been able to discover therein aught but the feeling of their own personal and sensuous existence.

And thus it follows from all that has been said, that this manner of thinking is by no means founded upon an error of reasoning or of judgment, which may be remedied by pointing out to the Age the mistake into which it has fallen, and reminding it of the rules of logic which it has transgressed; but it is founded upon the altogether defective character of the Age itself, and of those in whom this character most distinctly shows itself. While it and they are what they are, they must necessarily think as they now think; and if they are to think otherwise than they do think, they must first of all become something different from what they are.