FICHTE

"By the renunciation of the earthly, does faith in the Eternal first arise in our soul, and is there enshrined apart, as the only support to which we can cling after we have given up all else,--as the only animating principle that can elevate our minds and inspire our lives."
(Fichte, 1965, 145)

"Only through the common fountain of our spiritual being do we know of each other; only in Him do we recognise each other, and influence each other."
(Ibid, 156)

"The Eternal Will is thus assuredly the Creator of the World, in the only way in which He can be so, and in the only way in which it needs creation: in the finite reason."
(Ibid, 157)

"In the contemplation of these Thy relations to me, the finite being, will I rest in calm blessedness. I know immediately what I ought to do. This will I do freely, joyfully , and without cavilling and sophistry, for it is Thy voice which commands me to do it; it is the part assigned to me in the spiritual World-plan; and the power with which I shall perform it is Thy power . Whatever may be commanded by that voice, whatever executed by that power, is, in that plan, assuredly and truly good. I remain tranquil amid all the events of this world, for they are in Thy world. Nothing can perplex or surprise, or dishearten me, as surely as Thou livest, and can look upon Thy life. For in Thee and through Thee, O Infinite One! do I behold even my present world in another light. Nature, and natural consequences, are opposed to Thee, become empty, unmeaning words. Nature is no longer; Thou, only Thou, art."

(Ibid, 162)

"Blessed be the hour in which I first resolved to inquire into myself and my vocation! All my doubts are solved; I know what I can know, and have no apprehensions regarding that which I cannot know. I am satisfied; perfect harmony and clearness reign in my soul, and a new and more glorious spiritual existence begins for me. My entire complete vocation I cannot comprehend; what I shall be hereafter transcends my thoughts. A part of that vocation is concealed from me; it is visible only to One, to the Father of Spirits, to whose care it is committed. I know only that it is sure, and that it is eternal and glorious like Himself."

(Ibid, 165)

"Now that my heart is closed against all desire for earthly things, now that I have no longer any sense for the transitory and perishable, the universe appears before my eyes clothed in more glorious form. The dead heavy mass, which only filled up space, has vanished; and in its place there flows inward, with the rushing music of mighty waves, an eternal stream of life and power and action, which issues from the original Source of all life--from Thy life, and only the religious eye penetrates to the realm of True Beauty."

(Ibid, 172)

"Thy life, as alone the finite mind can conceive, it is self-forming, self-manifesting Will: --this Life, clothed to the eye of the mortal with manifold sensuous forms, flows forth through me and throughout the immeasurable universe of Nature. Here it streams as self-creating and self-forming matter through my veins and muscles, and pours its abundance into the tree, the flower, the grass. Creative life flows forth in one continuous stream drop on drop, through all forms and into all places where my eye can follow it; and reveals itself to me, in a different shape in each various corner of the universe, as the same power by which in secret darkness my own frame was formed. There, in free play, it leaps and dances as spontaneous motion in the animal, and manifests itself in each new form as a new, peculiar, self-subsisting world. The same power which, invisibly to me, moves and animates my own frame. Everything that lives and moves follows this universal impulse, this one principle of all motion, which, from one end of the universe to the other, guides the harmonious movement."

(Ibid, 172-173)

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