Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/62

 feeble powers of man, and continues to multiply them. Chemistry has introduced us into many chambers of the secret workshop of Nature, and enabled us to apply her wonders to our own uses, and to protect ourselves from the injuries they might otherwise inflict upon us. Astronomy has scaled the heavens for us, and measured their paths. You know, and the whole history of the Past as well as the description of the savage tribes which still exist upon the earth proves it to you, that all nations, the most cultivated not excepted, flying from the horrors of external Nature, and penetrating to the secret depths of their own heart, have first discovered there the most fearful of all horrors;—the Godhead as their enemy. By cringing humiliation and entreaty, by sacrifice of that which was dearest to them, by voluntary self-imposed penances, by human immolation, by the blood of an only-begotten Son, if need were, have they sought to bribe this Being so jealous of human happiness, and to reconcile him to their unexpected strokes of fortune, by humbly deprecating his resentment.

This is the Religion of the ancient world, and of the savage tribes which still exist, and I challenge the student of History to point out any other. From us this phantom has disappeared long ago; and the redemption and satisfaction spoken of in a certain system is a public matter of fact, in which we may either believe or not,—and which is all the more a matter of fact the less we believe in it. Our Age, far from shunning the Godhead, has, by its representatives, constituted the Deity the minister of its pleasures. We, for our part, far from finding fault with them on account of this want of the fear of God, rather count it one of their advantages; and since they are incapable of the right enjoyment of the Godhead,—of loving it, and living in it, and thus attaining Blessedness,—we may be well pleased that, at least, they do not fear it. Let them, if they please, throw it off altogether, or so fashion it as may be most agreeable to them.