ts to certainty and conviction what might otherwise be mere
illusion. It is not knowledge, but a determination of the will to
let knowledge pass for valid. I hold fast, then, forever to this
expression. It is not a mere difference of terms, but a real
deep-grounded distinction, exercising a very important influence on
my whole mental disposition. All my conviction is only faith, and is
derived from a disposition of the mind, not from the understanding.

* * * * *

There is only one point to which I have to direct incessantly all my
thoughts: What I must do, and how I shall most effectually accomplish
what is required of me. All my thinking must have reference to my
doing--must be considered as means, however remote, to this end.
Otherwise, it is an empty, aimless sport, a waste of time and power,
and perversion of a noble faculty which was given me for a very
different purpose.

I may hope, I may promise myself with certainty, that when I think
after this manner, my thinking shall be attended with practical
results. Nature, in which I am to act, is not a foreign being,
created without regard to me, into which I can never penetrate. It is
fashioned by the laws of my own thought, and must surely coincide with
them. It must be everywhere transparent, cognizable, permeable to
me, in its innermost recesses. Everywhere it expresses nothing but
relations and references of myself to myself; and as certainly as
I may hope to know myself, so certainly I may promise myself that I
shall be able to explore it. Let me but seek what I have to seek,
and I shall find. Let me but inquire whereof I have to inquire, and I
shall receive answer.

[Illustration: JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE]

I

That voice in my interior, which I believe, and for the sake of which
I believe all else that I believe, commands me not merely to act in
the abstract. That is impossible. All these general propositions
are formed only by my voluntary attention and reflection directed to
various facts; but they do not express a single fact of themselves.
This voice of my conscience prescribes to me with certainty, in each
particular situation of my existence, what I must do and what I must
avoid in that situation. It accompanies me, if I will but listen to it
with attention, through all the events of my life, and never refuses
its reward where I am called to act. It establishes immediate
conviction, and irresistibly compels my