'Even if reason and conscience—which shallow science and bad sophistry can never altogether expel—admit, with a noble illogicality, that error is possible, still by describing crime and wickedness as only an error we minimise the fault. For to err is human:—Who has not been mistaken on one point or another, whether he had fresh or pickled cabbage for dinner, and about innumerable things more or less important? But the difference of more or less importance disappears if everything turns on the subjectivity of conviction and on persistency in it. But the said noble illogicality which admits error to be possible, when it comes round to say that a wrong conviction is only an error, really only falls into a further illogicality—the illogicality of dishonesty. One time conviction is made the basis of morality and of man's supreme value, and is thus pronounced the supreme and holy. Another time all we have to do with is an error: my conviction is something trivial and casual, strictly speaking something outside, that may turn out this way or that. And, really, my being convinced is something supremely trivial? if I cannot know truth, it is indifferent how I think; and all that is left to my thinking is that empty good,—a mere abstraction of generalisation.
'It follows further that, on this principle of justification by conviction, logic requires me, in dealing with the way others act against my action, to admit that, so far as they in their belief and conviction hold my actions to be crimes, they are quite in the right. On such logic not merely do I gain nothing, I am even deposed from the post of liberty and honour into a situation of slavery and dishonour. Justice—which in the abstract is mine as well as theirs—I feel only as a foreign subjective conviction, and in the execution of justice I fancy myself to be only treated by an external force.'
P. [44], § 23. Selbstdenken—to think and not merely to read or listen is the recurrent cry of Fichte (e.g. Werke, ii. 329). According to the editors of Werke, xv. 582, the reference here is to Schleiermacher and to his Monologues. Really it is to the Romantic principle in general, especially F. Schlegel.
P. [45], § 23. 'Fichte' Werke, ii, 404: 'Philosophy (Wissenschaftslehre), besides (for the reason above noted that it has no auxiliary, no vehicle of the intuition at all, except the intuition itself), elevates the human mind higher than any geometry can It gives the mind not only attentiveness, dexterity, stability, but at the same time absolute independence, forcing it to be alone with itself, and to live and manage by itself. Compared with it, every other mental operation is infinitely easy; and to one who has been exercised in it nothing comes hard. Besides as it prosecutes all objects of human lore to the centre it accustoms the eye to hit the proper point at first glance' in everything presented to it, and to prosecute it undeviatingly For such a practical philosopher therefore there can be nothing dark, complicated, and confused, if only he is acquainted with the object of discussion. It comes always easiest to him to construct everything afresh and ab initio, because he carries within him plans for every scientific edifice. He finds his way easily, therefore, in any complicated structure. Add to this the security and confidence of glance which he has acquired in philosophy—the guide which conducts in all raisonnement and the imperturbability with which his eye meets every divergence from the accustomed path and every paradox. It would be quite different with all human concerns, if men could only resolve to believe their eyes. At present they inquire at their neighbours and at antiquity what they really see, and by this distrust in themselves errors are eternalised. Against this distrust the possessor of philosophy is for ever protected. In a word, by philosophy the mind of man comes to itself, and from henceforth rests on itself without foreign aid, and is completely master of itself, as the dancer of his feet, or the boxer of his hands.'
P. [45], § 23. Aristotle, Metaph. i. 2, 19 (cf. Eth. x. 7). See also Werke, xiv. 280 seqq.
P. [46], § 24. Schelling's expression, 'petrified intelligence.' The reference is to some verses of Schelling in Werke, iv. 546 (first published in Zeitschrift für speculative Physik, 1800). We have no reason to stand in awe of the world, he says, which is a tame and quiet beast—
Sterft zwar ein Riesengeist darinnen,
Ist aber versteinert mit allen Sinnen;
In todten und lebendigen Dingen
Thut nach Bewustseyn mächtig ringen.
In human shape he at length awakes from the iron sleep, from the long dream: but as man he feels himself a stranger and exile; he would fain return to great Nature; he fears what surrounds him and imagines spectres, not knowing he might say of Nature to himself—
Ich bin der Gott, den sie im Busen hegt,
Der Geist, der sich in allem bewegt:
Vom frühsten Ringen dunkler Kräfte
Bis zum Erguss der ersten Lebenssäfte,
. . . . . . .
herauf zu des Gedankens Jugendkraft
Wodurch Natur verjüngt sich wieder schafft,
Ist eine kraft, ein Wechselspiel und Weben,
Ein Trieb und Drang nach immer höherm Leben.
Cf. Oken, Naturphilosophie,§ 2913: 'A natural body is a thought of the primal act, turned rigid and crystallised,—a word of God.'