 Section 7 of The Destination of Man by Johann Gottlieb Ficht, translated by Jane Sinett. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter 7 Knowledge. The World Without. The Character I read by Kevin S. Spirit read by Larry Wilson. Go unboldly. I have not only not interrupted thee, but have even assisted in the development of these inferences. Now, however, I find it in earnest necessary to retract my position, that by means of the law of causality I attain the knowledge of the existence of external things. I could, by this means, become conscious only of a force out of myself, in the same manner as for the explanation of magnetic phenomena, I suppose a magnetic or for the explanation of electrical phenomena, an electrical force in nature. The world without me appears by no means as a mere force. It is something extended, solid, sensible, not like a mere force with its various manifestations. It does not merely produce effects, it has properties. In the apprehension of it, I am inwardly conscious of something quite different from mere thought. This appears to me as perception, although it has been proved that it cannot be such, and it will be difficult for me to describe the kind of consciousness that I seem to have of it, and to separate it from those other kinds of which we have spoken. Thou must nevertheless make the attempt, or we shall not come to a clear understanding. I will endeavor to open away towards it. I beseech thee, if thy organs of sight resemble mine, to fix thine eye on yonder object, and forgetting thy previous reasoning, to tell me candidly what is your impression produced in thee. Must thou not look over and perceive at a single glance a surface, and hast thou the most distant or obscure conception of that operation of extending a red point to a line, and a line to a surface of which thou hast spoken? It is an afterthought to divide this surface into lines and points, whenot every unprejudiced observer say and insist that he really saw a surface. I say saw. I am ready to concede all, and find that my self-observation corresponds exactly with thine. Thou must not, however, forget that it is not our design to relate to one another whatever takes place in consciousness as in a journal of the human mind, but to consider its various phenomena in their connection and to explain and deduce one from another, and that consequently no one of thine observations, which cannot certainly be denied, but which we would thane have explained, can overturn any one of my correct inferences. Do not therefore, in considering the resemblance of this kind of consciousness of bodies out of thyself, to real perception, overlook the great difference which nevertheless exists between them. I was about to remark on this difference. Which indeed appears as an immediate and not as an acquired consciousness, but sensation is consciousness of my own state. The consciousness of the object appears to have no relation to myself. I know that it is, and that is all. It does not concern me further. If in the first instance I seem like soft clay, on which now this, now that, impression is made, and the other I am like a mirror over which the forms of objects pass, without occasioning, the slightest change in it. This difference, however, is in favor of my argument. I seem to have a real independent consciousness of external existences entirely different from sensation or a consciousness of the various states of my own being. This is well observed, but be not too hasty. If we have been correct in our former conclusion, that thou canst have immediate consciousness only of thyself, if the consciousness now in question is neither of action nor of suffering, may it not be hitherto unrecognized consciousness of thine own existence, of thy existence in as much as thou art a knowing or intelligent being. I do not understand thee, but help me, for I wish to do so. I must then claim thy whole attention, for I am obliged to go deeper than we have hitherto gone into this matter, and to seek far for the answer to thy question. What art thou? To answer this question in the most general manner I must say I am I, myself. I am content with the answer. What is involved in this idea of I, and how does thou attain it? I can only make myself understood by opposition. In external existence, a thing is something out of me, the intelligent being cognizant of it. Concerning it, there arises the question, since the thing cannot know of itself, how can a knowledge of it arise? And since all its modifications lie in the circle of its own existence, and by no means in mind, how can a consciousness of it arise in me? How does the thing affect me? What is the tie between me, the subject, and the thing which is the object of my knowledge, of what I am? I know no more than that I am, but here no tie is necessary between subject and object. My own being is this tie I am at once the subject knowing, and the object known of, and this reflection or return of the knowledge on itself is what I designate by the term I, if I have any determinate meaning. Or it is in the identity of both subject and object that thine existence as an intelligent being consists? It is so. Hence thou then comprehend this identity, which is neither subject nor object, but lies at the foundation of both. By no means. It is the condition of all my knowledge that the conscious being and what he is conscious of appears as separate. I cannot even conceive any other kind of consciousness in recognizing my own existence I see myself as subject and object, which however are immediately connected. Hence thou be conscious of the moment in which this incomprehensible one divided itself thus. How can I, since my consciousness only becomes possible by means of this separation, since it is my consciousness itself that thus separates? Of this separation then thou becomeest immediately conscious in becoming conscious of thyself. This then should be thine actual original existence. So it is. And on what then is this separation based? I am an intelligence and have consciousness in myself. This separation is the condition and result of this consciousness. It has its basis, therefore in myself. Thou art an intelligence, and as such thou art to thyself an object of knowledge. Thine objective knowledge presents itself, therefore, to thysubjective knowledge, and hovers before it, although without any consciousness on thine part of such a presentation. Is this what thou would say? Or canst thou bring forward some more exact characteristics of subject and object as they appear in consciousness? The subjective contains within itself the basis of consciousness according to its form. But by no means according to its matter. That a consciousness and inward power of conception and contemplation should exist depends on the subject. But that this or that is conceived or contemplated depends on the object. The objective contains the basis of its existence within itself. The subjective appears as the still and passive mirror before which the objective floats. That the first should reflect images belongs to its own nature. That this or that is reflected depends on the object. The subjective then is precisely so constituted as thou hast described the consciousness of objects out of thyself to be. It is so, and this agreement is very remarkable. I begin half to believe that out of the internal laws in my own consciousness may precede even the conception of an existence out of myself, an independent of any act of mind. And the basis of this conception may be nothing more than these laws themselves. And why only half believe you? Because I do not yet see why it should produce precisely this conception of a solid extended mass occupying a certain portion of space. Thou hast ever the less seen above that it is no more than thine own sensation which thou extendest through space. And thou hast imagined the possibility that it may be exactly by this extension in space that it becomes transformed to thee into something sensible. For the present we have only to explain the manner in which this conception of space arises. That is then make the attempt. I know that thou canst not become conscious of thy intelligent activity as such until it passes through some change of state. The thou shouldst attempt to represent it to thyself whilst performing this function passing from one state to another. How would it appear to thee? My spiritual faculty appears as if moving from one point to another as if growing a line. A positive thought makes a point in this line. And why as if drawing a line? I cannot answer this or state the cause of it without passing the limits of my own existence. I can only say it is so. Thus then appears to thee a particular act of thy consciousness. How then appears not thyself produced, but thy inherited or acquired knowledge from which all particular thought is only the renewal or further modification? Under what image does this appear? Evidently as something in which one can draw lines and make points in all directions, namely as space. Now then it will be clear to thee that what proceeds from thine own mind may nevertheless appear to thee as an existence out of thyself. Nay must necessarily appear so. Thou hast penetrated to the true source of thy conceptions of things out of thyself. This is not perception for thou perceivest only thine own state. It is not thought for things do not appear to thee as the product of thought. It is really and in fact an absolute and immediate consciousness of an existence out of thyself, just as perception is an immediate consciousness of thine own state. Do not be deceived by sophists and half philosophers. Things do not appear to thee by means of any representatives. Of the thing that exists and that can exist, thou art conscious immediately. Thou thyself art that of which thou art conscious. By a fundamental law of thy being, thou art thus presented to thyself and thrown out of thyself. In all consciousness I contemplate myself, and the objective that which is contemplated is also myself, the same I which contemplates presented objectively. I see and am the conscious being, see my own visual sensation, and am also that of which I am conscious. For this reason is the object transparent to thy mind's eye, because it is thy mind itself. I divide, limit, determine the possible forms of things, and the relations of these forms previous to all perception. And no wonder, for I divide, limit, and determine only my own knowledge. Thus does a knowledge of things become possible. It is not in them and cannot proceed out of them. It proceeds from thee and from a law of thine own nature. There is no external sense, for there is no external perception. There is, however, an external contemplation, not of the object, but of a knowledge, not subjective, but presented to hovering before the subject. Through the means of this external contemplation are perception and sense regarded as external. I see or feel a surface, but I contemplate my sight or vision of a surface. Space, penetrable, transparent, illuminated, the purest image of my knowledge is not seen, but contemplated in the mind, and in it is my own vision contemplated. The light is not out of, but in me, and I am the light. Thou hast formerly replied to my question, how does thou know that thou seeest and hearest, by saying that thou hast an immediate knowledge or consciousness of these sensations? Now perhaps thou will better be able to explain this immediate consciousness of sensation. It must be a twofold consciousness. Sensation is itself an immediate consciousness, for I am sensible of my own sensation, but from this arises no knowledge of external existence, for I am sensible only of my own state. I am however originally not merely a sensitive, but also a contemplative being, not merely an active, but also an intelligent one. I contemplate my sensation, and there arises for myself and my own nature a knowledge, a cognition of an existence. Sensation becomes transformed into a capability of sensation, the various affections of my senses, as red, smooth, and so forth, into a something-red and smooth, out of myself whose existence I contemplate as in space, because the contemplation itself is space. Thus does it become clear why I believe I see or feel surfaces, which in fact I neither see nor feel, but I contemplate my own sensation of sight or touch as that of a surface. Thou hast well understood me, or rather thyself. Sensation or Contemplation The Character I, Read by Kevin S. Spirit, Read by Larry Wilson It is then not at all by means of an inference drawn, consciously or unconsciously, from the law of causality, that the object appears to me. It is immediately presented to my consciousness without any process of reasoning. I cannot, as I have just done, say that perception becomes transformed into a something perceivable, for this is the first in consciousness. It is not an affection of my own sight or touch, which I call red, smooth, and so on, but of a red-smooth object I am conscious. If, however, thou shouldst be obliged to explain what is red, smooth, and the like, thou couldst not possibly make any other reply than that it was that by which thou werest effected in a certain manner. Certainly, if you ask me this question, I make an attempt to explain it. In fact, however, neither I nor anyone else ask this question. I forget myself entirely and lose myself in contemplation of the object. I am not conscious of my own state at all, but only of an existence out of myself, red and green, or properties, or attributes of the thing, and that is all. The matter can be no further explained any more than, according to what we have agreed on, my affection can be further explained. This is most evident in the affections of sight. Color appears as something out of myself, and it would never occur to a man of unsophisticated understanding to explain it as that which caused a certain affection or state of being in himself. Assuredly, however, he would do so if we asked what he meant by sweet or sour. We will not now stop to inquire whether the sensation of sight is more than pure sensation, whether it may not be something intermediate between sensation and contemplation, and their connecting leak in our minds. I admit the assertion, and it is extremely welcome to me. You can indeed lose yourself in contemplation of the object, and without directing particular attention to yourself, or without interest for any particular external action, you do so naturally and unavoidably. This is the remark to which the defenders of a vain consciousness of external things have recourse, when it is shown that the law of causality, by which their existence might be inferred, exists only in ourselves. They deny then that any such inference is made, and in as much as they refer to real consciousness in certain cases, this cannot be disputed. These same defenders, when the nature of contemplation from the laws of intelligence itself is explained to them, draw themselves this inference, and are never wary of repeating that there must be something external to us which compels us to make this inference. Let us not concern ourselves about them at present. I have no preconceived opinion, and seek only for truth. Contemplation necessarily proceeds from the perception of thine own state, although there may not be at every moment a clear consciousness of such a perception. Even in that consciousness in which thou looses thyself entirely in the object, there is still something which is only possible from a close observation of thine own state. That is to say that at all times the consciousness of existence out of myself is accompanied by an unobserved consciousness of my own state of being, the first dependent on the latter. Is it not so? This is my meaning. Prove this to me, and I shall be satisfied. Thus thou regard objects as placed generally in space, or as each occupy in a certain portion of space. The latter for every object has its determinant size. I do various objects fall in the same part of space. By no means. They exclude each other. They are over or under, behind or before, one another, nearer to me or further from me. And how does thou come to this measurement and arrangement of space? Is it by sensation? How can it be, since space itself is no sensation? Or is it by contemplation? This cannot be, for contemplation is immediate and infallible. What is contemplated does not appear as brought forth and cannot deceive. But I undertake to estimate the size and distances of objects and their positions with respect to others, and it is known to every Tyro that we first see all objects in the same line and learn to calculate their greater or lesser distances. An infant stretches out his hand toward distant objects as if they lay immediately before him, and one born blind who should suddenly receive sight would do the same. This representation of distances is therefore a judgment formed by means of the understanding. I may err in my estimation in what are called optical deceptions or not deceptions of sight, but erroneous judgments form concerning the size of objects and the various relations between them, and consequently concerning their true figure and distance. The object is really as I behold it in space and the color which I observe is likewise real. In this there is no deception. And what is then the principle of this judgment, to take the easiest case? How do you judge of the distances of objects? Doubtless by the greater strength or feebleness of impressions otherwise similar, I see before me two objects of the same red color, and the one whose color appears the fainter I regard as more distant, and as much more distant as it is fainter. Therefore it is according to the degree of strength in the impression. And how then do you estimate this degree of strength? Obviously by my observation of the matter in which I am affected, and moreover by very slight differences in the mode of my affection. Thou hast conquered all consciousness of objects out of myself is determined by a clear and exact consciousness of my own state, and I reason from the effect produced in me to the cause of this effect out of myself. Thou hast yielded so quickly that I must now carry on the argument against myself in thy name. My proof can hold no further than for these cases in which in actual consideration an estimate of the size, distance, and position of objects takes place. In most instances, however, a judgment is formed of the size and distance of an object at the very moment in which it is perceived. When we have once learned to estimate distances by the strength of the impression, the rapidity of the judgment is merely the consequence of its frequent exercise. I have learned by a lifelong experience to calculate distance by this means, and the representation that I now make of them is combined of sensation, contemplation, and former judgments, of the last of which only I am conscious. I do not any longer see a red or a green out of myself but a red and a green at different distances. This last addition is merely a renewal of a judgment formerly attained by a reasoning process. Is it not then now become clear whether the existence of objects out of thyself is discovered by reasoning or intuitively contemplated or obtained by a combination of both? Perfectly, and I believe that I have now obtained the fullest insight into the origin of the representation of objects out of myself. First, then, I am simply because I am conscious that I am, conscious of my existence as an intelligent, practical being. The first consciousness is sensation, the second contemplation, unlimited space. What is unlimited I cannot comprehend, for I am finite. I limit, therefore, by my thought a certain portion of the universal space and place the former in a certain relation to the latter. Thirdly, my own sensation forms the scale by which I measure this limited portion of space. What affects me in such or such a manner stands in such or such a relation to other things affecting me. The properties or attributes of the object proceed from the consciousness of my own sensations, the space which it fills from intuitive contemplation. By a process of thought both are united in one, and by the act of my own mind, by which it is viewed as in space, that which was merely a state or affection of my own being becomes an attribute of the object. It is, however, placed in space not by intuitive contemplation, but by thought, by the measuring and regulating power of thought. Not that this act is to be regarded as a creation by thought, but merely a limitation of a given product of contemplation and sensation. What affects me in such or such a manner is to be placed in such or such a relation. This is the process followed in arranging measuring objects in space. But in declaring that it affects thee in a certain manner, do we not assume that it affects thee generally? Doubtless we do. And is any representation of an external object possible, which is not in this manner limited and defined in space? No, for an object is not generally in space, but each one in a limited portion of space. Therefore, in fact, whether consciously or not, every external object is represented by the object as affecting thyself as certainly as it is represented as filling a certain portion of space. That follows, certainly. And what kind of representation is that of an object affecting thyself? Evidently an act of thought and a thought according to the law of causality above mention. I see now still more clearly that the consciousness of an object is doubly united to my self-consciousness by intuitive contemplation and by thought according to the law of causality. It must then be possible for thee to become conscious of this act or thought. Doubtless it must, although usually I am not so. To this passive state, this affection of thyself therefore, thou must add the supposition of an activity out of thyself, such as thou hast before described in reference to the law of causality. I must. And with the same validity and with the same signification as before. Thou canst not think otherwise and canst know nothing more than that thou dost think so. Nothing more. This we have already seen. In so much then the object is the product of thy thought. Certainly for this follows from the former premises. And what then is this object discovered by the idea of causality? A force existing outside of myself. Which is neither discovered by this sensation nor by contemplation. No, I am always perfectly conscious that I do not perceive it immediately but only by means of its manifestations, although I ascribe to it in existence independent of my own. I am affected and I infer that there must be something that affects me. The object intuitively contemplated therefore is very different from the object of the understanding. The one appears before the extended in space. The other, the inward force, is discovered only by a process of reasoning. I place this force also in space and connect it with the extended mass which I contemplate. And what then is, according to thy view, the relation subsisting between it and the mass? The mass with its properties is itself the effect and manifestation of the inward force. This force has a twofold operation. One by which it maintains itself in a certain definite form. Another by which it appears and affects me in a certain manner. Thou hast formerly sought for a supporter of attributes other than the space containing them. A something permanent amidst the vicissitudes, the perpetual change. I have, and this something permanent is found. It is this force itself which endures forever, assuming and supporting all change. Let us now cast a glance back on what we have established. Thou findest thyself in a certain state, affected in a certain manner, which thou callest red, smooth, sweet, and so on. Does thou know more in this case than simply that thou art thus affected, that such a sensation exists? I do not. Further, by a law of thy nature as an intelligence, a space is conceived by thee. Or does thou know more than this concerning this matter? By no means. Between this state, or sensations of which thou art conscious, and that conception of space, there is not the smallest connection except that which exists in thy consciousness itself. Or does thou perceive any other? I see none. Thou art, however, a reasoning as well as a contemplative and a sensitive being. Thou dost not merely feel thy state or sensation. It is also present to thy thought, and thou findest thyself compelled to assume a cause existing out of thyself, a foreign force. Does thou know more this than that such an inference is unavoidable? I can know no more than that. I am compelled to think this by an inevitable law of my own thought. Through this thy thought first arises a connection between the sensation which thou feelest, and the space intuitively contemplated by thee. Thou reverse to the latter the cause of the former. Or is it not so? It is so. Thou hast clearly proved that I affect this connection by the process of my own thought, and that it is neither felt nor contemplated. Of any connection beyond the limits of my consciousness I cannot speak. I cannot proceed a hair's breadth further any more than I can spring out of myself. To attempt to represent a connection between things in themselves with the eye in itself is to ignore the nature of thought, or to speak of that as thought which no one can ever think. From thee then I need fear no contradiction, when I say that our consciousness of external existence is absolutely nothing but the product of our own faculty of presentation, and that we know nothing more of external objects than that we have a certain determinant consciousness of them subject to certain laws. I cannot deny this. It is so. Hence thou ought to object to the bolder statement of the same proposition, that in that which we call intuitive knowledge or contemplation of the external world, we contemplate only ourselves, and that our consciousness is, and can be only a consciousness of the modifications of our own existence. I say also that we'll not be able to advance ought against the assertion, that if the external world generally arises for us only through our own consciousness, what is individual in particular in this external world can arise in no other manner. And if the connection between what is external to us and ourselves is merely a connection in our own thought, then is the connection of the manifold objects of the external world, this and no other. As clearly as I have shown thee the origin of this general presentation of objects beyond thyself, could I also show how there arises an infinite multiplicity of objects, mutually related, determining each other with rigid necessity, and forming a complete system such as thou thyself has well described. I spare myself this task, however, since I find that thou hast already arrived at the result for the sake of which alone I should have undertaken it. I see this result, and must submit to it. And with this insight mortal be forever free from the fear which has been to thee a source of torment and humiliation. Trimble no longer at a necessity which exists only in thine own thought. Fear no longer to be overwhelmed by things which are the product of thine own mind, to find thyself the thinking being placed in one class with what is brought forth by thine own thoughts. As long as thou couldst believe that a system of things such as thou has described really existed out of and independently of thyself, and that thou wert but a link in this great chain, such a fear might be well grounded. Now that thou hast seen that all this exists, but in thee and through thee, thou wilt doubtless no longer fear that which is but the creature of thine own mind. From this fear I wish to free thee, and I leave thee now to thyself. THE CHARACTER I read by Kevin S. SPIRIT read by Larry Wilson. STAY FALSE SPIRIT. Is this the wisdom thou hast promised me? Thou first freed me indeed from all dependence by transforming me, and all that surrounds me, into a phantom, into nothing. Thou hast loosened the bonds of necessity by annihilating all existence. IS THE DANGER SO GREAT? AND THOU CONJEST ACCORDING TO THY SYSTEM. MY SYSTEM. We have toiled together in its erection. Thou hast seen all as clearly as myself. It would be hard for thee at present to enter fully into my system of thought. Call it by what name thou wilt. Our inquiries have ended in blank nothingness. Presentation, modification of consciousness. Mere consciousness is but an image. A shade without reality. In itself it cannot satisfy me, and is not the smallest worth. I might endure to see this material world, without me, vanish into a mere picture, be dissolved into a shadow. But my own personal existence vanishes with it. It becomes a mere series of sensations and thoughts without end or aim. Is it not so? I say nothing to my own name. Examine, investigate, help thyself. I appear to myself as a body existing in space with organs of sense, capacities of actions, a physical force governed by a will. Thou wilt say, as thou hast before said, of objects out of myself, that it is a combined product of sensation, thought, and intuitive contemplation. As I have been compelled to admit that what I call red, sweet, hard, and so on is nothing more than an affection of my own organs, and that only by contemplation and thought it is placed in space, and regarded as a property of a thing existing independently of me. So shall I also be compelled to admit that this corporeal frame, with its organs of sense, is but a sensualization of my inward thinking self, that I, the spiritual pure intelligence, and I, the corporeal frame in the corporeal world, are one and the same, merely viewed from different points, conceived by two different faculties, that of pure thought and external contemplation. This will certainly be the result of any inquiry that may be instituted. In this thinking, willing, intelligent being, however thou mayst name it, possessed of these faculties of thought, volition, and so forth, in whom these faculties rest, how shall I have attained the knowledge of it? Is it by immediate consciousness? This cannot be, for I am conscious only of special acts of thought, volition, etc., but not of the capacities through which they are performed, far less of a being in whom these capacities rest. I contemplate the specific thought which occupies the present, or the seceding moment, and there this intellectual contemplation ceases. This inward contemplation again becomes an object of thought, but according to the laws by which this thought acts, it is but a half an imperfect thought, as the thought of my state during sensation was only a half thought. As formally to the passive receptivity I added in thought an act of power, so here to the determinate thought or will of any specific moment, I add a determinable, in infinite manifold possible thought or will. This manifold possibility of thought I conceive as one definite whole, and thus arises the idea of a finite power of thought, is something different from the thought itself, a being or essence possessing this power. But on higher principles it is conceivable that this thinking essence may be produced by thought itself. Thought in general is creative, intuitive contemplation gives the naked fact and nothing more. Thought explains this fact and unites it to another, not found in intuition, but produced purely by thought itself. I am conscious of a certain thought, thus far and no farther, does intuitive consciousness proceed? I think this thought, that as I call it for, from an indeterminate possibility to determinate existence, and thus do I with every determinate act or thought of which I am conscious, and thus arise for me those series of powers or capacities, and of beings possessing them, which I assume. Even with respect to thyself therefore, thou art only conscious of this or that determinate state of sensation, contemplation or thought. That I feel, I contemplate, I think, as the real foundation of the thought, contemplation or sensation, by no means, not even so much as this have thy principles left me. Very possibly. Nay, of necessity, all that I know is my consciousness. All consciousness is either immediate or immediate, the first is self-consciousness, the second consciousness of that which is not myself, what I call I is therefore absolutely nothing, but a certain modification of consciousness, immediate, and returning into itself, instead of being directed outward. Since this is the necessary condition of all consciousness, it must, whether perceptibly or not, accompany all other, and therefore do I refer all thought to this I, and not to the thing thought of out of me. Otherwise the I would at every moment vanish, and for every new conception a new I would arise, and I would never mean anything more than not the thing. This scattered self-consciousness is united by thought itself into the unity of the supposed capacity or power of thought, according to the supposition, all conceptions of which I am immediately conscious, proceed from one in the same power which rests in one and the same being, and thus arises for me the idea of personal identity and of the real and effective power of this personality, necessarily a mere fiction, since the personality itself is a fiction. And now can'ts find satisfaction in this? How can I truly say I feel, I think, I contemplate? It would be more correct to say it is felt, it is thought, and so on. Nay, if still more cautious it would be better to say the thought appears. So much only is truly known. The rest is merely a supposition, a fiction. It is well expressed. There is nothing enduring, permanent, either in me or out of me, nothing but everlasting change. I know of no existence, not even of my own. I know nothing, and I am nothing. Images, pictures, only are pictures which wander by without anything existing past which they wander, without any corresponding reality which they might represent, without significance and without aim. I myself am one of these images, or rather a confused image of these images. All reality is transformed into a strange dream, without a world of which the dream might be, or a mind that might dream it. Contemplation is a dream, thought the source of all existence, and of all that I fancy, reality, of my own existence, my own capacity, is a dream of that dream. Thou hast well understood all. Use the sharpest words thou canst find to make this result hateful. It is nevertheless unavoidable, unless thou wilt perhaps retract the admission thou hast made. By no means. I have seen and now see clearly that it is so, yet I cannot believe it. Thou seized it clearly, yet cannot believe it. That is strange. Ruthless mocking spirit! I owe thee no thanks for having guided me on this path. Short-sighted mortal! Thus is it ever with thy race. Diss thou suppose that these results were less evident to me than to thyself? And that I did not beforehand clearly see how by these principles all reality was annihilated, all existence transformed into a dream. Diss thou take me for an admirer of this system, or suppose that I regarded it as a complete system of the human mind? Thou hast sought to know, and thou hast chosen a wrong path. Thou hast sought knowledge where no knowledge can reach, and hath persuaded thyself that thou hast obtained an insight into that which by its very nature cannot admit of it. I found thee in this state of mind. I wish to free thee from thy false knowledge, but by no means to bring thee the true. Thou wouldst know thine own knowledge. Is it wonderful that in this attempt thou hast discovered nothing more? What is discovered by and through knowledge is nothing more than knowledge. All knowledge consists of representations, images, and thou hast asked for some correlative to these images. This demand cannot be satisfied by knowledge. A system in mere knowledge is a system in mere pictures without reality, significance, or object. The reality in which thou hast formerly believed, the sensuous material world of which thou hast feared to be the slave, has vanished, for the sensuous world arises to thee only through knowledge, and is itself thy knowledge. Thou hast seen the delusion, and without denying thy better insight, can never again be deceived by it. This is the sole merit of the system at which we have toiled together. It destroys and annihilates error. It can give no truth, for it is absolutely empty. Thou seekest, as I well know, something real and permanent lying beyond these mere appearances, a different kind of reality from that which has been even now annihilated, but in vain does thou seek this through thy knowledge. Hust thou no other organ by which to apprehend it? If not, it will never be found by thee. Thou hast, however, such an organ. Let it be thy care to awaken and vivify it, and thou wilt attain the most perfect tranquillity. I leave thee now to thyself. Of man, terrible spirit, thy words have crushed me, but thou hast referred me to myself, and what were I? Could anything out of myself irrecoverably cast me down? How is it that my heart revolts at a system against which my understanding can object nothing? It is that I require something beyond these mere images or mental conceptions, something that is and would be if the conception were not, and which the conception takes cognizance off without in the smallest degree affecting. A mere conception is a delusion, and if my entire knowledge be nothing more, I am defrauded of my life. That nothing exists but ideas, conceptions, is to the common sense of mankind a laughable absurdity. To the more instructed judgment, aware of the deep and bimere reasoning, irrefragable grounds for such an assertion, it is an overwhelming and annihilating thought. And what is then this something lying beyond all conception, towards which I look with such ardent longing? What is the power which draws me towards it? What is the central point of my soul with which it is united? Not merely to know, but according to thy knowledge, to do, is the destiny of man. Not for leisurely contemplation of thyself, not to brood over devout sensations art thou here. Thine action, thine action alone, determines thy worth. This voice, which sounds from the innermost recesses of my soul, leads me out of mere knowledge to something lying beyond and entirely opposed to it, something which is higher than all knowledge, and contains within itself the end and object of all knowledge. If I act, I shall doubtless know that I act, and how I act. But this knowledge will not be itself the act, but will merely behold it. This voice then announces to me what I sought, a something lying beyond knowledge, and in its nature entirely independent of it. Thus it is, I know this immediately, intuitively, but I have entered on the territory of speculation, and doubt once awakened will continue secretly to disturb me, unless I can justify my belief, even before this tribunal. I must ask myself therefore, how is it thus, whence arises that voice in my soul, which leads me beyond the boundaries of knowledge? There is in me an impulse to absolute independent self-activity. Nothing is more insupportable to me than to be merely by another, for another, and through another. I will be something by my own unaided effort. This impulse is inseparably united with my self-consciousness. I endeavour to explain this feeling, to give sight to the blind impulse by thought. It urges me to independent action. Who am I? Subject and object in one, contemplating and contemplated, thinking and thought of? As both must I have become what I am. As both must I originate ideas, and produce a state or mode of being beyond them. I ascribe to myself an intelligence, the power of originating the idea of a purpose, and further of manifesting this idea in action, a real effective productive power, which is something quite different from the capacity of ideal conception. Those ideas of purpose or design are not, like the ideas of knowledge, imitations or representations of something already given, but much rather, types of something yet to be produced. The power or force which produces them lies beyond them, and only becomes manifest in them. Such an independent energy it is that in consequence of this impulse I ascribe to myself. Here then it appears, does the consciousness of all reality begin, the real efficacy of my idea, and the real power of action, which in consequence of it I am compelled to ascribe to myself, commences at this point. Let it be as it may, with the reality of the sensual world, I have reality in myself. I can make this active power the subject of thought, but I do not produce it by my thought. The immediate feeling of this impulse to activity lies at the foundation of my thought, and thought does no more than conceive this feeling according to its own laws. Yet let me pause. Shall I willfully and intentionally deceive myself, can this be justified before the tribunal of speculation? I feel indeed an impulse towards external action, and since it is I who feel this impulse, and neither with my feeling nor my consciousness I can pass out of myself, it appears that the fundamental basis of this impulse is in myself, that it is a self-originated activity. Might it not be, however, that this impulse, although I cannot perceive it, is in reality the impulse of a to-me-invisible foreign power, and the idea of my free activity, a delusion consequent on the narrowness of my sphere of vision. I have no reason to suppose this, but also no reason to deny it. I must acknowledge that I absolutely know nothing, and can know nothing of it. Do I then really feel within myself that power of free action, which strangely enough, I ascribe to myself without knowing anything of it? By no means, for it is merely that something determinable, which, according to the well-known laws of thought, is supposed as the source of all that is determinate, is that impulse towards the imagined realization of an idea anything more than the usual process of all objective thinking, which always seeks to appear something more than mere thinking, why should it be more in this case than in the other? I feel this impulse, I say, and think this since I may say it. Do I then really feel it, or only think I feel it? Is not all that I call feeling really a presentation of objective thought and the first transition point of all objectivity? And do I then really think, or do I merely dream that I think? What can hinder the everlasting continuance of such questions? At what point can they be forced to stop? I must confess that at every step in the manifestation of consciousness it is possible to stop, and by reflection beget a new consciousness, and that thereby the first immediate consciousness is driven a step further back, and darkened, and made doubtful, and that to this latter there is no highest step. I know that the system which has so revolted me as well as all skepticism rests on the clear consciousness of this procedure. I know that according to this system I must refuse obedience to that voice which seems to speak from my soul. I cannot will to act. For according to that system I cannot know whether I do really act or not. That which seems my action must be a mere picture, perhaps a delusive picture. Be perfectly indifferent to me. All interest, all earnestness is a face from my life, and life and thought are transformed into a mere play proceeding from nothing and tending to nothing. Shall I then refuse obedience to that voice? I will not. I will freely yield myself to the destiny towards which this impulse points, and will find in this resolution the truth and reality of thought as well as all other truth and reality which it supposes. I will keep within the limits of sound natural thought where this impulse has placed me, and renounce all those subtle investigations and refined sophistries which alone could make me doubt of its truth. I understand thee now, sublime spirit. I have found the organ by which to apprehend this reality, and probably all other. It is not knowledge, for knowledge can only demonstrate and establish itself. Every knowledge supposes some higher knowledge on which it is founded, and of this ascent there is no end. It is faith that voluntary reposing on the views naturally presenting themselves to us, because through these views only can we fulfill our destiny which approves of knowledge and raises to certainty and conviction that which without it might be mere delusion. It is no knowledge, but a resolution of the will to admit this knowledge. This is no mere verbal distinction. It is a true and a deep one, pregnant with the most important consequences for my whole character. Let me forever hold fast by it. All my conviction is but faith, and it proceeds from the heart, and not from the understanding. Knowing this, I will enter into no dispute, for I foresee that in this way nothing can be gained. I will not suffer my convictions to be disturbed by it, for its source lies higher than all disputation. I will not endeavor by reasoning to press my conviction on others, or will not be discouraged if such an undertaking should fail. I have adopted my mode of thinking for myself, and not for others, and to myself only need I justify it. Whoever has the same upright intention will also attain the same or a similar conviction, and without it this is impossible. Now that I know this, I also know from what point all culture of myself and others must proceed. From the will, and not from the understanding. Let the first only be firmly directed towards the good, the latter will of itself apprehend the truth. Should the latter be exercised and developed while the first remains neglected, nothing can come of it but a facility in vain and endless sophisticated refinements into the absolute void in name. Now that I know this, I am able to confute all false knowledge that might raise itself against my faith, for I know that every seeming truth born of thought alone, and not ultimately resting on faith, is false and spurious. For knowledge, purely and simply such, when carried out to its utmost consequences, leads to the conviction that we can know nothing. Such knowledge never finds anything in the conclusions that it has not previously placed in the premises by faith, and even then its conclusions are not always correct. In this I possess the test of all truth and of all conviction. Truth originates in the conscience, and what contradicts its authority, or renders us unwilling or incapable of rendering obedience to this authority, is most certainly false. Should I even be unable to discover the fallacies through which it is accomplished? Thus also has it been with every human creature who has been born into the world. Unconsciously, they have all seized on the reality which exists for them only through faith, and this intuitive faith forces itself on them simultaneously with their existence. If in mere knowledge, in mere perception and thought, we can discover no ground for regarding our mental presentations as more than mere pictures, why do we all nevertheless regard them as more, and imagine them a basis, a substratum, independent of all other modifications? If we all possess the capacity and the instinct to go beyond this natural view of things, why do so few follow this instinct, exercise this capacity, nay, even resist with a sort of bitterness when one seeks to urge them towards this path? What holds them imprisoned in these natural boundaries? Not inferences of reason, for there are none which could do this. It is our deepest interest in reality that does this, in the good that is to be produced, in the common and sensuous that is to be enjoyed. From this interest, this concern in reality can no one who lives detach himself, and just as little from the faith which that brings with it. We are all born in faith, and he who is blind follows blindly the secret and irresistible attraction. He who sees follows by sight, and believes because he will believe. What unity and completeness, what dignity does our human nature receive from this view? Our thought is not based on itself, independently of our instincts and inclinations. Man does not consist of two existences running parallel to each other. He is absolutely one. Our entire system of thought is founded on intuition, and as is the heart of the individual, so is his knowledge. Our instinct forces on us a certain mode of thought, only so long as we do not perceive the constraint. The moment the constraint appears, it vanishes, and it is no longer the instinct by itself, but we ourselves, through our instinct, who form our system of thought. But it is appointed that I shall open my eyes, shall learn to know myself, shall perceive the constraint, and that I shall thus of necessity form my own mode of thought. I am absolutely free, the source of my own spiritual life as of my thought. I would not that my character should be the production of nature, but of myself, and I have become that which I would be. By the unlimited pursuit of sophisticated subtleties, I might have darkened and made doubtful the natural view of my own spiritual nature. But I have chosen the system I have now adopted with foresight and deliberation from other possible modes of thought, because I regard it as the most worthy the dignity of my nature and destiny. Freely and consciously I have returned to the point at which nature had abandoned me. I admit her declaration, not because I must, but because I will. The noble destiny to which my understanding is appointed fills me with reverence. It no longer serves merely to call forth an endless succession of representations, proceeding from nothing, intending to nothing. It is entrusted to me for a great purpose. Its cultivation to this end is confided to my hands, and will be at my hands again required. I know immediately, and my faith requires no further confirmation of this, than my immediate consciousness, that I am not necessitated to a blind and aimless succession of thoughts, but that I can voluntarily direct my attention to one object, and turn it to another. That it is I who think, and that I can choose the subject of my thought. By reflection I have found that my whole manner of thinking, and the views which I take of truth, depend only on myself. Since I can choose whether I will go on subterlizing, till I lose all power of recognizing truth, or whether I will yield myself to it with faithful obedience. My mode of thinking, the cultivation of my understanding, and the objects to which I direct, it depends entirely on my will. True insight is merit, the perversion of my capacity for knowledge, thoughtlessness, error, and unbelief are culpable. There is but one point towards which I should unceasingly direct my thoughts, namely, what is appointed for me to do, and what is the most suitable mode of doing it. My thoughts must bear relation to my actions, and must be regarded as means to an end, otherwise they are idle and aimless. A mere waste of time and strength, and the perversion of a noble power. I may hope, I may surely promise myself success in this purpose. The nature on which I have to act is not a system foreign to myself, into which I cannot penetrate. It is regulated by its own laws of thought, and cannot but agree with them. Its interior must be transparent, penetrable, and cognizable to me. It expresses everywhere nothing more than the relation of my own being, and I may hope as certainly to know it as to know myself. Let me seek only what I should seek, and I shall find. Let me ask only what I should ask, and I shall receive an answer. The voice in my soul, in which I will have faith, and for the sake of which I have faith in all else, does not merely command me generally to act, but in every particular situation it declares what I shall do, and what leave undone. It accompanies me through every event of my life, and it is impossible for me to contend against it, to listen to it and obey it honestly and impartially, without fear or equivocation, is the business of my existence. My life is no longer an empty play without truth or significance. It is appointed that what conscience ordains me shall be done, and for this purpose am I here. I have understanding to know, and power to execute it. By conscience alone comes truth and reality into my representations. I cannot refuse to it my attention and my obedience, if I would not renounce the end of my existence. It is true, and the foundation of all other truths and reality, that its voice is to be obeyed, and, consequently, all is true, which is assumed in the possibility of such an obedience. There appear before me in space a certain phenomena, to which I transfer the idea of myself. I conceive them as being like myself. A certain speculative system has indeed taught me, or would teach me, that these rational beings out of myself, are but the productions of my own power of representative perception. That according to the laws of my own, that according to the laws of my thought, I am compelled to carry my ideas thus out of myself, and that by the same laws I can only apply them to certain conceptions of space, time, and the like. But the law of my conscience requires me to regard them as free substantive existences, entirely independent of myself, and declares that the purpose of their being lie in themselves, and that I dare by no means interfere with their fulfillment, nay, that I am bound to forward it to the utmost of my power. It commands me to reverence their freedom, and to sympathize in their destiny as similar to my own. In this manner will and must I act towards them, if I have resolved to obey the voice of my conscience, and regarding them from this point, the speculations which perplexed me will vanish like an empty dream. I think of them as beings like myself, I have said, but strictly speaking it is not by mere thought that they are presented to me as such. It is by the voice of my conscience, saying, this is the limit of thy freedom, here no and reverence the aim of others. This is but translated into the thought, here is another free being, and independent like thyself, thy fellow creature. There appear before me other phenomena, which I do not regard as beings like myself, but as things irrational. Speculation finds no difficulty in showing how these are developed from, and are the necessary productions of, my own representative perceptions. But I apprehend these things also, by want, and desire, and enjoyment, not by the mental conception alone, but by hunger, and thirst, and satiety, does anything become for me food and drink. I am necessitated to believe in the reality of that which threatens my sensuous existence, or in that which alone is able to maintain it. Conscience comes to the assistance of this natural instinct, and consecrates and limits it. Thou shalt preserve, exercise, strengthen thy sensuous power, for it has been counted upon in the plans of reason. But thou canst only preserve it by employing it in a manner conformable to the inward laws of these things. There are also other beings in thy likeness, upon whose force also calculation has been made, as upon thine. Permit to them the same use of all that has been allowed to thee. Respect as their right, what is destined for them, what is destined for thee as thine. Thus shall I act. According to this action must I think. I am compelled to regard these things as standing under their own laws, independent of, though perceivable by, me, the laws of nature, and therefore to ascribe to them an independent existence. I am compelled to believe in such laws. The task of investigating them is set before me, and that empty speculation vanishes like a mist before the sun. In short, there is for me no such thing as a pure existence in which I have no concern, and which I contemplate merely for the sake of the contemplation. It exists for me merely by its relation to me, and there is one relation to which all others are subordinate, that of moral action. My world is the object and sphere of my duties, and absolutely nothing more. My capacity, and the capacity of all finite beings, is insufficient to comprehend any other. End of Section 10 Section 11 of The Destination of Man by Johann Gottlieb Fichte Translated by Jane Sinett This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Chapter 11 Faith Inward Voice All which exists for me presses on me by this relation only its existence and reality. Only by this do I apprehend it, and I have no organ by which to apprehend any other existence. To question whether, indeed, and in fact, such a world is present as I present to myself, can I give no more fundamental answer, none more raised above doubt than this. I have most certainly such and such determinant duties, and they cannot be otherwise fulfilled than in such a world as I represent to myself. Even to any who had never meditated on his moral destiny, if there should be such a one, or who had never formed any resolution concerning it, even with a view to an indefinite future, even for him, his sensual world, and his belief in its reality arises in no other manner than from his ideas of a moral world. If he should not apprehend this by the thoughts of his duties, he certainly will, by the demand for his rights. What he does not require of himself, he will certainly require of others, that they should treat him with consideration, not as an irrational thing, but as a free and intelligent being, and thus that they may be enabled to meet his own claims, he will be necessitated to regard them also as free and independent of mere natural agency. If he proposes to himself no other object in his relations to things surrounding him than that of enjoyment, he at least requires this enjoyment as a right, and demands from others that they should leave him undisturbed in this enjoyment, and thus embraces even the world of sense in his moral idea. These claims of regard for the preservation of his own existence for his freedom and rationality no one will willingly renounce, and in his ideas of these claims at least is found earnestness and belief in reality and denial of doubt, even if they are not associated with the acknowledgment of a moral law in his heart. It is not, therefore, the operation of what we regard as things external, which do indeed exist for us only in as much as we know of them, and just as little the play of imagination and thought whose products as such are no more than empty pictures, but the necessary faith in our own freedom and energy and in the reality of our actions and of certain laws of human action will lie at the root of all our consciousness of external reality, a consciousness which is itself only belief founded on another unavoidable belief. We are compelled to admit that we act, and that we ought to act in a certain manner. We are compelled to assume a certain sphere for this action. This sphere is the actual world as we find it. From the necessity of action proceeds the consciousness of the external world, and not the reverse way, from the consciousness of the external world to the necessity of action. From the latter is the former deduced. We do not act because we know, but we know because we are destined to act. Practical reason is the root of all reason. The laws of action for rational creatures are of immediate certainty, and their world is only certain so far as these are so. We cannot deny them without annihilating the world and ourselves with it. We raise ourselves from nothing, and maintain ourselves above it solely by our moral agency. I am required to act, but can I act without having in view something beyond the action itself without directing my intentions to something which could only be attained by my action? Can I will without willing some particular thing? To every action is united in thought immediately and by the laws of thought itself, some future existence, a state of being related to my action as effect to cause. This object of my action is not, however, to determine my mode of action. I am not to place the object before me, and then determine how I am to act that I may attain it. My action is not to be dependent on the object, but I am to act in a certain manner merely because it is my duty so to act. This is the first point. That some consequence will follow this action I know, and this consequence necessarily becomes an object to me, since I am bound to perform the action which must bring it to pass. I will find that something shall happen because I am to act so that it may happen. As I do not hunger because food is present, but a thing becomes food for me because I hunger, so I do not act thus or thus because a certain end is to be attained, but the end is to be attained since I must act in the manner to attain it. I do not observe a certain point and allow its position to determine the direction of my line and the angle that it shall make, but I draw simply a right angle and by that determine the points through which my line must pass. The end does not determine the commandment, the commandment, the end. I say it is the law of my action itself which points out to me its object. The same inward voice that compels me to think I ought to act thus compels me also to believe that my action will have some result. It opens to my spiritual vision a prospect into another world, another, and a better than that which is sensually present to me. It makes me aspire after this better world, embrace it with every impulse, live in it, and in it alone find satisfaction and tranquility. The law of my action guarantees to me the certain attainment of its object. The resolution to direct all my powers of life and thought to fulfill this law brings with it the immovable conviction that the promise implied in it is true and certain. As I live in obedience to it I live also in the contemplation of its end, live in that better world which it foretells to me. Even in the mere consideration of the world as it is, apart from this law, I am conscious of the wish, the earnest desire, the absolute demand for a better. I cast a glance upon the present relations of mankind among themselves and to nature, upon the weakness of their powers, the strength of their passions and desires. I cannot think of the present state of humanity as one destined to be permanent, as its entire and ultimate destination. Then indeed we're all a dream and a delusion, and it would not be worth the toil of living to renew perpetually this idle game, tending to nothing, signifying nothing. Only in as much as I may contemplate it as the means to a better as the transition point to a higher and more perfect state does it obtain any value in my eyes. Not for its own sake, but for the sake of that which it prepares us for. Can I support it, esteem it, and joyfully perform my part in it? My mind can take no hold on the present world, nor rest in it a moment, but my whole nature rushes onward with irresistible force towards that future and better state of being. Shall I eat and drink only that I may hunger and thirst, and eat and drink again till the grave which yawns beneath my feet shall swallow me up, and I myself become the food of worms? Shall I beget other beings in my likeness that they may eat and drink and die, and leave behind them other beings to do the like? To what purpose this perpetually revolving circle, this everlasting repetition in which things are produced only to perish, and perish to be again produced? This monster continually swallows itself up, that it may again bring itself forth, and bringing itself forth only that it may again swallow itself up. Never, never can this be my destiny or that of my race. There must be something which is because it has become thus, and remains permanently, and can never become again. And what is to endure must be brought forth in the changes of what is transitory, and perishable, and be carried forward safe and inviolate upon the waves of time. Our race still struggles for its subsistence and preservation with a resisting nature. Still is the larger portion of mankind condemned to severe toil in order to procure nourishment from itself, and from the smaller portion which thinks for it. Immortal spirits are forced to fix their whole thoughts, and endeavors on the ground that brings forth their food. Often does it happen that when the toil is finished and the laborer promises himself its long-lasting fruits, a hostile element will destroy in a moment the results of long-continued industry and patient deliberation, and cast him out of prey to misery and hunger. Storms, floods, volcanoes desolate whole countries, and works bearing the impress of a rational soul are hurled with their authors into the wild chaos of death and destruction. Disease snatches into an untimely grave men in the pride of their strength, and children whose existence has yet borne no fruit. Pestilence sweeps blooming lands and regions, one from the wilderness by the toil of man, becomes deserts again. Thus it is now, and thus it shall be, forever. No work bearing the stamp of reason, and undertaking to enlarge her dominion can ever wholly perish. The victory which the irregular violence of conflicting elements has obtained must at least tend to their exhaustion and ultimate reconciliation. All those outbreaks of the power of nature before which the strength of man sinks into nothing, those earthquakes, those desolating hurricanes, those volcanoes, can be nothing more than the last struggles of the crude mass against the subjection to regular progressive laws to which it is compelled. Nothing but the last strokes of the not yet complete formulation of our globe. That resistance must gradually become weaker and be at length exhausted since in the regular course of things there can be nothing to renew its strength. That formulation must be at length completed and our destined dwelling be made ready. Nature must gradually attain such a point of development that her proceedings can be securely counted upon, and that her power shall bear a determinant proportion to that which is destined to contract it, that of man. In so much as this proportion has already been established, the civilization obtained a firm footing. The workings of man by their mere existence shall react on nature with a new and vivifying force beyond the intention of their authors. The more regular and various culture of the soil shall give a new impulse to life, and vegetation shall ameliorate and disperse the heavy and beanful vapors that hang over deserts, marshes, and permeable forests, and the sun shall pour more animating rays into an atmosphere breathed by healthful, industrious, and cultivated nations. Science, first awakened by the impulse of necessity, shall now calmly study the unchangeable laws of nature and calculate their possible consequences, and while closely following the steps of nature in the actual world, form for itself a new ideal one. Every new discovery shall be retained, and form the foundation for further knowledge, and be added to an accumulating stock, the common possession of our race. Nature shall become more and more intelligible, and transparent light shall be thrown on her profoundest mysteries, and human power, armed by human invention, shall exercise over her a boundless control, and the conquest once made be peacefully maintained. No further expenditure of mechanical toil shall be necessary than what the human body requires for its exercise and healthy development, and work shall cease to be a burden, for a reasonable being is not destined to be a bearer of burdens. The greatest and most terrible disorders are not, however, the effects of natural causes, but of freedom itself. Man is the cruelest enemy of man. Lawless hordes of savages still wander over vast wildernesses. Man meets his fellow man as a foe, and perhaps triumphs in devouring him for food. Where civilization has succeeded in uniting these wild hordes, and subjecting them to the social law, they attack each other, as nations with the power which law and union has given them. Defying toil and danger and privation, armies penetrate forests and cross wide plains till they meet each other, and the sight of their brethren is the signal for mutual murder. Armed with the most splendid inventions of human ingenuity, hostile fleets traverse the ocean through waves and storms, man rushes to meet man upon the lonely inhospitable sea, to destroy each the other with their own hands amidst the raging of the elements. In the interior of States, where men seem to be united in equality under the law, it is for the most part only force and fraud which rule in her venerable name. And this kind of war is so much the more shameful that it is not openly declared to be such, and the party attack is not aware of the necessity of defense. Smaller associations rejoice aloud in the ignorance the folly, the vice, and misery of the greater number of their brethren, and make it confessedly their object to retain them in this condition in order to prolong their subjection. No movement towards its amelioration can anywhere be made, without raising up a host of selfish interests to war with the mover, who must be prepared to see the most various and contradictory opinions league together against him in common hostility. The good cause is ever the weaker, for it can be loved for itself alone. The bad attracts each individual by the promise most seductive to him, whilst the clash of contending interests is hushed in one common opposition to the good wherever it is found. Scarcely indeed is such an opposition needed, for error, misunderstanding, and distrust divide even the good, and the divisions are widened by the earnestness with which each strives to carry out his own views of what is best, and thus is dissipated and lost, the strength which even if united would hardly suffice to hold the scale even. One blames the other for rushing with stormy impetuosity towards his object, without waiting till time should have opened the way to it. Whilst the other blames him for hesitation and cowardice, for allowing things to be done contrary to his better conviction, and for never regarding the present moment as the right one for action, the omniscient alone can determine which of the disputants is in the right. Everyone regards the point to which he has devoted himself, and which he best understands, as the most important and necessary, the point where all reform must begin. He requires all to unite with him for the execution of his particular object, and regards it as treason to the good cause if they refuse. Thus to well good intentions among men appear to be lost in fruitless strivings, whilst in the meantime all goes on as well, or as ill as it would do without these struggles, by the mere blind mechanism of nature. Thus is it now, but thus shall it not be forever, or human life would be an idle game, without meaning and without end. Those savage hordes shall not always remain savage. No race can be born with all the capacities of perfect humanity, yet destined never to develop these faculties, or to become more than a sagacious animal might be. Those savages are destined to be the progenitors of generations of powerful, civilized, and virtuous men, or their existence would be without an object. The most cultivated nations of modern times are the descendants of savages. Whether human society naturally tends towards this cultivation, or that the first impulse must be given by instruction and example from without, and the original source of all human culture must be a revelation from above, by the same path, whatever it may be, which former savage tribes have followed, may the present also attain it. They must, no doubt, pass through the same perils of a first merely sensual civilization with which society is still struggling, but they will nevertheless be brought into association with the great whole of humanity, and be enabled to take part in its further progress. It is the destiny of our race to become united into one great body, thoroughly connected in all its parts and possessed of similar culture. Nature and even the passions and vices of man have from the beginning tended towards this end. A great part of the way towards it is already past, and we may surely calculate that it will in time be reached. Let us not ask of history if man on the whole be yet become more purely moral, to a more extended comprehensive power he has certainly attained, although as yet this power has been too often, perhaps, necessarily misapplied. Neither let us ask whether the intellectual and ascetic culture of the antique world concentrated on a few points may not in degree have excelled that of modern days. The answer might be a humiliating one, and it might appear that in these respects the human race had rather retrograded than advanced in the course of time. But let us ask at what period the existing culture has been most widely diffused and distributed among the greatest number of individuals, and we shall doubtless find that from the beginning of history to our own day the brightness of those few points has been extending in wider and wider circles, and that one individual after the other, one nation after the other, has been illuminated, and that the light is spreading further and further under our own eyes. This is the first station point of humanity on its endless path. Until this has been attained, until the existing culture of every age has been diffused over the whole inhabited earth, and every people be capable of the most unlimited communication with the rest, must one nation after another, one continent after another, be arrested in its course, and sacrificed to the great whole of which it is a member, its stationary or retrogressive age. When that first point shall have been attained, when thought and discovery shall fly from one end of the earth to the other, and become the property of all, then without further interruption, without halt or regress, our race shall move onward with united strength and equal step to a perfection of culture, to describe which thought and language fail. In the interior of those associations formed, rather by fortuitous circumstances than by reason, called states, after they have subsisted for a time, when the resistance excited by new oppression has been lulled to sleep, and the fermentation of contending forces appeased, abused by its continuance and by general endurance, assumes a sort of permanent form, and the ruling classes in the uncontested enjoyment of the privileges they have gained have nothing more to do than to extend them further, and to secure also this extension. Urged by this insatiable desire, they will continue these encroachments from generation to generation, and never cry, hold enough till the measure of oppression shall be full, and despair give back to the oppressed what centuries of injustice had deprived them of courage to claim. They will then no longer endure any among them who cannot be content to be on an equality with others. As a protection against reciprocal injustice or new oppression, all will take on themselves the same obligations. Their deliberations, in which everyone shall decide whatever he decides for himself, and not for one subject to him whose sufferings will never reach him, and in whose fate he takes no concern. These deliberations, in which no one can hope to be the one to commit an injustice, but everyone must fear that he may suffer it. These deliberations, which alone deserve the name of legislation, unlike the ordinances of a League of Lords to the numerous herds of their slaves, these institutions will be necessarily just, and will lay the foundation of a true state in which each individual, by the care for his own security, will be compelled to pay regard to the security of others since every injury attempted must infallibly recoil on him who attempts it. By the establishment of this true state, and of a firm inward peace, is at the same time foreign war, at least with other true states, become impossible. In order to avoid doing injury to its own citizens by accustoming them to injustice, violence, and robbery, and pointing out other roads to gain than those of diligence and activity, every true state will as severely prohibit, as carefully prevent, or as exactly compensate and as severely punish an injury to the citizen of a neighboring state as to one of its own. This law concerning the security of neighbors is a necessary one to every state that is not an association of robbers, and by this means is every just complaint of other states prevented, and every case of necessary defense among nations entirely obviated. There will be no longer necessary permanent and intimate relations of states as such with each other, which might lead to strife, but usually only of individual citizens with individual citizens. A state can be injured only in the person of one of its citizens, and the injury is atoned for by immediate compensation. Between such states as these is no rank to insult, no ambition to offend, no officer of one state can be entitled to mingle in the internal affairs of another, nor could he hope to draw the smallest advantage from any influence he could so obtain. That a whole nation should determine for the sake of plunder to make war on a neighbor is impossible, for in a state where all are equal the plunder could not be the portion of some few, but must be divided amongst all, and the share of no individual could ever repay the cost of the war to him. Only where all the advantage falls to the oppressor, and all the toil and suffering to the numerous herd of his slaves is a war of this nature possible and conceivable. States like these could have nothing to fear from states resembling them, but merely from savages, or barbarians, who, unskilled to enrich themselves by industry, would feign do so by war, or from nations of slaves, driven by their masters to a war from which they will reap no advantage. As to the first, every individual state must, by the arts of civilization, necessarily be the stronger against the latter. It is the obvious policy of all to strengthen themselves by union. It is evidently dangerous to the tranquility of free states to suffer others to exist as their neighbors, to whom wars of conquest might be advantageous, and it is therefore to their interest to see all around them free, and to extend for their own states the victories of civilization over barbarism, of freedom over slavery. Soon will the nations civilized by them find themselves placed in the same relation towards others still enslaved, and compelled to pursue towards them the same course of conduct, and thus of necessity by the existence of some few really free states, the diffusion of civilization, freedom, and universal peace, embrace the whole globe. Thus from the establishment of a just and upright internal government, and of peace between individuals, will necessarily follow integrity in the external relations of states, and universal peace among them. The establishment of a just and upright internal government, however, and the liberation of the first nation that shall be really free, must be the necessary consequence of the increasing pressure of the dominant classes upon those beneath them, and the operation of this cause may be safely left to the passions and the blindness of those classes, even notwithstanding all warnings they may receive. In these only true states all temptation to evil will be taken away, and there will be every possible inducement to every man to direct his will to what is good. No human creature ever loved evil for the sake of evil, but only the advantages and enjoyments he hoped from it, and which in fact, in the present condition of humanity, do sometimes result from it. As long as this condition shall continue, as long as a premium shall be set on vice, no thorough reformation of mankind as a whole can ever be looked for. But in a social constitution, such as we have imagined, evil conduct will offer no advantages, nay, rather will be certainly prejudicial, and by the operation of self-love itself will the extravagances of self-love in unjust actions be repressed. By the institutions of such a state will every injury to others, every encroachment on their rights, not merely be vain, but assuredly prejudicial to him who should make the attempt. In his own country, out of his country, on the whole earth, he shall find no one whom he can injure with impunity. No one will resolve on wickedness which he can never execute, and which can produce nothing but his own damage. The use of liberty for evil purposes is taken away. Man must resolve either to renounce his free agency and become a mere passive machine in the great whole, or to employ it for good, and thus in soil thus prepared will good easily prosper. When men shall be no longer divided by a selfish separation of interests, and their powers exhausted in a struggle with each other, nothing will remain for them but to turn their united strength against their common antagonist, a resisting, still uncultivated nature. No longer distracted by private ends, they will unite for a common object, and form one body, everywhere animated by the same spirit and the same love. Every loss to the individual is a loss to the whole. Every step forward made by one man is a step forward for his race. The strife of good and evil is abolished, for the evil finds no place. The strife of the good between themselves is abolished, for each regards what is good for its own sake, and not because he is the author of it. That the truth should be discovered, that the useful actions should be done is all important. Not at all by whom it shall be done. Everyone is ready to join his strength to that of others, to become subordinate to others, and whoever is most capable will be supported by all, and his success rejoiced in by all with an equal joy. This, then, is the object of our earthly existence, which reason sets before us, and for the infallible attainment of which she is our warrant. This is not merely the goal towards which we must all strive, that we may exercise our powers on something great that is never to be realized, it shall, it must be realized, as surely as a sensuous world and a race of reasonable beings exist in time, and for whose existence no serious and rational purpose, but this is conceivable. If all human life be merely a spectacle for a malignant spirit, if this inextinguishable longing after the eternal and imperishable, this ceaseless pursuit of what forever escapes us, this restless hurrying forward in an ever revolving circle, be merely a mocking jest, shall not a wise man refuse to play his part in such an idle pageant, and the moment of awakening reason be the last of his earthly life. If this shall not be, then is this end an unattainable one. It is attainable in life and through life, and reason herself is the pledge to me for its attainment in commanding me to live. End of section 12. Section 13 of The Destination of Man by Johan Gottlieb Fishta Translated by Jane Sinett This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section 13 Faith The goal attained, what now? But when this goal shall have been attained and the human race at length stand at this point, what then? There can be no higher state upon earth, and the generation which has once reached it can do no more than maintain itself there, and die and leave it to the descendants who must also do the same. Humanity must then become stationary, and therefore can this, the highest earthly end, not be the high stand of human existence. This earthly end is conceivable and attainable and finite. If we consider all preceding generations as merely means for the production of this last complete one, we do not escape the question of reason to what end then is this last one. Since a human race is come upon the earth, its existence must, indeed, have an end according with, and not contrary to, reason. But were it not better that it had never been withdrawn from night and chaos? Reason does not exist for the sake of life, but life for the sake of reason. An existence which does not of itself satisfy reason and solve all her doubts cannot be the true one. And are then indeed the actions which the voice of conscience commands, that voice whose dictates I never dare dispute, are they always the means and the only means for the attainment of this grand end of human existence. It's indisputable that in acting thus my intentions must be directed to this end, but are then these my intentions always fulfilled? Is it enough that we will what is good that it may happen? Or how many virtuous intentions are entirely lost for this world, and how many appear rather likely to oppose than to forward the end we have in view? On the other hand, how often do the most despicable passions of men, their vices and their crimes, forward more certainly the good cause, than the endeavors of the upright man who will never do evil that good may come of it? It seems that the good of the world is distant to grow and prosper, quite independently of all human virtues and vices, by its own laws through an invisible and unknown power, as the heavenly bodies run their appointed course high above all human effort. And that this power carries forward in its own grand plan, all human intentions, good and bad, and moles to its own high purposes, that which was undertaking for others far different. If the attainment of this earthly end, therefore, could be the whole object and end of our existence, and that thus every question might be solved, then would this end be not ours but the end of that unknown power? We can never at any moment know with certainty what will tend to the advancement of this end, and nothing would remain to us but to give by our actions some material, no matter what, for this power to work upon, and to leave it to the care of molding this material to its own purposes. It would in that case be the highest wisdom not to trouble ourselves about what does not concern us, but to live as our inclinations might lead us, and calmly leave the consequences to that unknown power. The moral law in our hearts would be ideal and superfluous, and entirely unsuitable to a being distant to nothing higher than this. In order to come into harmony with ourselves, we cannot refuse obedience to that voice and repress it by all means as a troublesome and foolish fancy. Yet will I not refuse obedience to the voice of my conscience, as truly as I live and breathe, will I live according to her dictates, and let this resolution be first unheist in my mind, that in which all else depends, but which depends on nothing else, the inward principle of my spiritual life. As a reasonable being, however, I found it impossible to act without knowing why and for what, without placing before me something at the object and end of my action. If this obedience be a reasonable obedience, if the voice that I obey be really that of my highest reason, and not a mere delusion of fancy, or an enthusiasm communicated to me, somehow from without, this obedience must have some consequences, must serve to some end. It is evident that this end is not that of earthly existence, or of the present world. It must be then that of a higher world, above the present.