Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/78

 our own sense and consciousness, that the one Idea assumes different forms;—which different forms are then themselves named Ideas. I say expressly,—within our own sense and consciousness; for only in consciousness do these manifestations of the Idea differ from each other: beyond that they are but one.

The first form assumed among men by this effluence of Original Energy,—that in which it has manifested itself in the earliest Ages, and in which it is most widely active at the present day, is its expression in outward matter by means of our own material power;—and in this expression of the Idea the Fine Arts consist. Effluence of Original Energy, I have said,—flowing forth from itself, and sufficient for itself, independent of experience or observation of the external world. This latter gives us only individual, and therefore ignoble and hateful, conceptions, which in having attained reality in one instance, have attained it once too often already;—the repetition and multiplication of which by Art would be but an evil service to humanity. In outward matter, I said,—irrespective of its peculiarities:—whether the physical representation of one lost in the Idea (for this alone is the true object of Art) stand fixed in marble, or glow upon the canvass; or the emotions of an inspired soul find an utterance in music, or the feelings and thoughts of such a mind speak themselves simply in words;—still it is the effluence of Original Energy in outward matter.

The true Artist, in the sense in which we have spoken of him, finds in the practice of his Art the highest enjoyment of the Blessedness we have described; for his whole being goes forth in free self-sufficient activity, and in the consciousness of this activity. And is there any one, then, to whom every way is closed of participating in the enjoyment of such creations; and so, in a certain sense, and in a far inferior degree, becoming a joint-creator of them;