[Literature] Johann Gottlieb Fichte: The Vocation of Man #10/65

I may repent, and rejoice, and form good resolutions;—although, strictly speaking, I cannot even do this, for all these things come to me of themselves, when it is appointed for them to ​do so;—but most certainly I cannot, by all my repentance, and by all my resolutions, produce the smallest change in that which I must once for all inevitably become. I stand under the inexorable power of rigid Necessity:—should she have destined me to become a fool and a profligate, a fool and a profligate without doubt I shall become; should she have destined me to be wise and good, wise and good I shall doubtless be. There is neither blame nor merit to her nor to me. She stands under her own laws, I under hers. I see this, and feel that my tranquillity would be best ensured by subjecting my wishes also to that Necessity to which my being is wholly subject.

Oh these opposing wishes! For why should I any longer hide from myself the sadness, the horror, the amazement with which I was penetrated when I saw how my inquiry must end? I had solemnly promised myself that my inclinations should have no influence in the direction of my thoughts; and I have not knowingly allowed them any such influence. But may I not at last confess that this result contradicts the profoundest aspirations, wishes, and wants of my being? And, despite of the accuracy and the decisive strictness of the proofs by which it seems to be supported, how can I truly believe in a theory of my being which strikes at the very root of that being, which so distinctly contradicts all the purposes for which alone I live and without which I should loathe my existence?

Why must my heart mourn at, and be lacerated by, that which so perfectly satisfies my understanding? While nothing in Nature contradicts itself, is man alone ​a contradiction? Or perhaps not man in general, but only me and those who resemble me? Had I but been contented to remain amid the pleasant delusions that surrounded me, satisfied with the immediate consciousness of my existence, and never raised those questions concerning its foundation, the answer to which has caused me this misery! But if this answer be true, then I mustof necessity have raised these questions:—I indeed raised them not, but the thinking nature within me raised them. I was destined to this misery, and I weep in vain the lost innocence of soul which can never return to me again.

But courage! Let all else be lost, so that this at least remains! Merely for the sake of my wishes, did they lie ever so deep or seem ever so sacred, I cannot renounce what rests on incontrovertible evidence. But perhaps I may have erred in my investigation;—perhaps I may have only partially comprehended and understood the grounds upon which I had to proceed. I ought to repeat the inquiry again from the opposite side, in order that I may at least possess a correct starting point. What is it, then, that I find so repugnant, so painful, in the decision to which I have come? What is it, which I desired to find in its place? Let me before all things make clear to myself what are these inclinations to which I appeal.

That I should be destined to be wise and good, or foolish and profligate, without power to change this destiny in aught,—in the former case having no merit, and in the latter incurring no guilt,—this it was that filled me with amazement and horror. The reference ​of my being, and of all the determinations of my being, to a cause out of myself,—the manifestations of which were again determined by other causes external to itself,—this it was from which I so violently recoiled. The freedom which was not mine, but that of a foreign power without me, and even in that, only a limited, half freedom,—this it was which did not satisfy me. I myself,—that of which I am conscious as my own being and person, but which in this system appears only as the manifestation of a higher existence,—this “I” would be independent,—would be something, not by another or through another, but of myself,—and, as such, would be the final root of all my own determinations. The rank which in this system is assumed by an original power of Nature I would myself assume, with this difference, that the modes of my manifestations shall not be determined by any foreign power.