Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/80

 dwelling of all activity and all life in the One, Ever Present Source of Life, the Godhead;—or Religion. He in whom this consciousness arises with immediate and unalterable certitude and becomes the soul of all his other knowledge, thoughts, and feelings,—he has entered into possession of a happiness which can never be disturbed. Whatever he encounters, is a form of that original source of Life which in all its forms is holy and good, and which he cannot but love in every shape it may assume; for it is, as he may express it in other words, the Will of God, with which his Will is always at one. Whatever he may be called upon to do, however difficult, mean, or ignoble it may seem, is the living form of that fountain of Life within him, to be the expression of which constitutes his greatest happiness;—it is the Will of God with him; and to be the instrument of God is his supreme delight. He who ploughs his field in this Faith and Love is infinitely more blessed than he who, without them, removes mountains.

These are the materials for the picture of the One Life according to Reason, to the delineation of which we have devoted the last and the present lecture. Let us now gather together these materials into one conception.

We said that the different forms into which the conception of the One Eternal Original Energy separates itself in our consciousness, and of which we have now indicated the most remarkable, are nevertheless, beyond this consciousness of ours, only one and the same Energy. Wherever this Energy enters into life in any one of these forms, it nevertheless, in and by virtue of that form, embraces itself as a whole, loves itself as a whole, and develops itself as a whole, only without its own knowledge or consciousness; nowhere separated into parts, but always the One, undivided Energy repeated and reproduced in different shapes; everywhere the One Life, the fountain of whose Being is in itself Alone, ceaselessly producing itself anew