Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/68

 to man in two different ways:—either in mere conception, and as the picture of a condition foreign to his own;—or by himself living this life. In the first case, it loves itself and delights in itself as seen in this conception, because this is at least the conception of the Life according to Reason, and is itself according to Reason; and then there arises the approval, admiration, and reverence of which we have spoken. In the second case, it rises to infinite enjoyment of its own being, which is Blessedness. The former condition,—that of approval,—I proposed to test by your own feelings in our last lecture; promising you for to-day a feeble description of the second.

And in the fulfilment of my first object, that I might not roam about at random, blindly groping among my materials, but arrange my thoughts around a common centre, I said—‘Everything great and good on which our Age rests, and by the power of which it exists, has been brought about by the sacrifices which the Past has made for Ideas.’ By calling to mind that the land had been redeemed from the state of wildness to that of cultivation, from the state of war to that of peace, from ignorance to knowledge, from blind terror before God to emancipation from such fear,—I showed that the first of these changes, at least in the countries which we inhabit, had been effected by pious and holy men; and the last, everywhere and in all lands, by Heroes;—all of whom, the one class as well as the other, had sacrificed their life and its enjoyments for the sake of their Ideas. While I was proceeding to answer an objection which might be made with reference to this last point, my discourse was interrupted by the expiry of our usual time, and I now resume it at the same place.

It is Honour, some one may say, which inspires the Hero,—the burning image of his fame now and in after-times, which impels him onward through difficulty and danger, and which repays him for his life of sacrifice and self-denial in the coin on which he sets most value. I