Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/73

 those whose lives have been filled by its inspiration and devoted to its service. What they have endured;—what the Exalted Founder himself,—what his immediate followers,—what their successors through a long series of ages, until even to us, as to a later birth, their word came;—what they all have wrought and suffered among rude and superstitious nations, animated only by the gladdening and inspiring truth which had risen upon their souls and become the ruling impulse of their lives,—I shall not here call to mind. This Age is not ignorant of these things; it brings them sufficiently into notice, in order that it may laugh at the fanaticism which is all it can discover in them. Only through Christianity; through the vast miracle in which it had its origin, and by which it was ushered into the world, has this change been effected. It is no doubt quite conceivable that after the Truth has once been proclaimed, and in consequence of its numerous adherents has even acquired an authority among men, we may by peaceful inquiry investigate its foundations, reconstruct it by the power of our own understanding, and so, in a certain sense, rediscover it: but whence the great Founder obtained courage boldly to confront the phantom which had been consecrated by the universal assent of all former Ages, and the very thought of which had paralysed every exertion, and to discover that it was not, but that instead of it there was only Happiness and Love:—this was the miracle. So far as regards the representatives of this Age, it is very certain, if we may judge by other proofs of their acuteness and penetration, that it is not this acuteness, but only the unacknowledged influence exercised over them by this very tradition,—an influence which they deride wherever their dull eye can reach it,—to which they owe it that they do not, even to the present day, smite their faces before idols of wood, and pass their children through the fire to Moloch.

Whether you can forbear from passing a sentence of