Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/92

 would have entirely got rid of our premises and therefore of all their consequences; and we should then be perfectly satisfied with him.

In the extended picture of the Third Age which it is now my duty to present to you, I ought, perhaps, in the opinion of most of those who may have considered the matter, to proceed to a description of the relation of the Present Age to the several forms of the One Idea which I have set forth in the last lecture; and this plan I have approximately followed in the general characterization of the Age which is contained in the second lecture.

But I have already stated, and I now repeat, that the fundamental maxim of this Age is to accept nothing but that which it can understand:—the point upon which it takes its stand is thus a conception. It has also been already shown that it does not attain the Epochal character, and assume the rank of a separate Age, so long as it only blindly follows this maxim; but that it can then only be clearly understood when it recognises itself in this maxim, and accepts it as the Highest. Hence the distinctive and peculiar characteristic of this Age is this notion of conception, and it bears the form of Knowledge;—only the empty form, indeed, since that from which alone Knowledge derives its value, the Idea, is wholly wanting here. Hence, in order to get at the root of this Age, we must first speak of its system of Knowledge. In our description of this system, its views of the fundamental forms of the Idea, as necessary parts of the system itself, must likewise come into view.

In order to give you, in this place, a still more comprehensive glance of what you have now to expect, I add the following ground of distinction, to which I have not yet adverted. The maxim of the Age is to accept nothing but that which it can understand,—understand, that is to say, through the mere empirical conceptions of Experience;—