Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/75

 feebler form of Life. A living Thought: as is obvious at once, for Thought is by its very nature living, even as self-existence is by its very nature living; and thus Thought can only be conceived of as self-existent, and self-existence can only be ascribed to Thought, inasmuch as both bear within them the Idea of Life. A matter-inspiring Thought:—and this in a two-fold sense: All material Life is the expression of the Idea;—for matter itself is but the reflection of a latent Idea, from which it derives the motion and vitality it contains. But where the Idea breaks through this external covering, reveals itself openly and distinctly as Idea, and bursts forth in its own peculiar self-sustaining Life, then the lower grade of life, where the Idea lies latent, disappears in the higher, which now alone fills the individual life, and lives its own Life therein;—and then arises, in a word, that phenomenon which has shown itself in all our previous descriptions,—the phenomenon of the sacrifice of the personal, i.e. of the undeveloped ideal life, to the Life of the Idea distinctly revealed as such. Thus, I say, it is with Life:—not the flesh liveth but the spirit; and this fundamental truth, which the speculative philosopher can prove by the necessary laws of thought, has been verified and proved in his own person by every one in whom the Idea has assumed a determinate living form, although it may be that he himself has not been clearly conscious of it. To raise this direct proof from personal experience into the clearness of distinct consciousness, and so bring it home to every one, is the business of popular-philosophical teaching, and here especially it is mine.

We said that where the Idea manifests itself in its proper and independent Life, the lower form of life, namely the sensuous, entirely disappears in it and is for ever superseded and extinguished. The love of this lower form of life for itself, and its interest in itself, is annihilated. But all our wants arise only from the existence of this interest, and all