Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/71

 never lives again,—and whatever may be its success in the senseless and purblind Present, the Future will assuredly despise the Imitator who mistakes himself for a Creator.

This remark upon Honour, which has been here adduced only in reference to Heroism, is also applicable to what is to follow, where in like manner superficiality is wont to speak of an ambition the nature and possibility of which it has not power to comprehend.

In our former lecture we said that the once timid savage, to whom every power of Nature was an obstacle and a hindrance, is now through Science made acquainted with his own constitution, and has thus attained a mastery over the powers of the outward universe. Who are they who have discovered and extended the Sciences?—have they accomplished this without labour and sacrifice?—what has been their reward?

While the Age in which they lived spent its days in gay enjoyment, they sat wrapt in solitary thought, in order that they might disclose a law or a relation which had called forth their admiration, and with respect to which they had absolutely no other desire than simply to disclose it; sacrificing pleasure and fortune, neglecting their outward concerns, and lavishing their finest genius in these researches; laughed at by the multitude as fools and dreamers. Now, their discoveries have proved of manifold advantage to human life, as we have already called to mind. But have they themselves enjoyed these fruits of their labours? have they foreseen or even conjectured these results?—have they not rather, when their spiritual aspirations have been repressed by such views of their occupation, uttered truly sublime lamentations over the desecration of the Holy to the profane uses of life, it being concealed from them that life itself must be thereby sanctified? Only when, through their labours, these discoveries had been made so comprehensible, and a knowledge of them had been so widely