are with the Time-spirit, other warfare seems questionable. Hast
thou in any way a contention with thy brother, I advise thee, think
well what the meaning thereof is. If thou gauge it to the bottom, it
is simply this: 'Fellow, see! thou art taking more than thy share of
Happiness in the world, something from my share: which, by the Heavens,
thou shalt not; nay I will fight thee rather.'--Alas, and the whole lot
to be divided is such a beggarly matter, truly a 'feast of shells,' for
the substance has been spilled out: not enough to quench one Appetite;
and the collective human species clutching at them!--Can we not, in all
such cases, rather say: 'Take it, thou too-ravenous individual; take
that pitiful additional fraction of a share, which I reckoned mine, but
which thou so wantest; take it with a blessing: would to Heaven I had
enough for thee!'--If Fichte's _Wissenschaftslehre_ be, 'to a certain
extent, Applied Christianity,' surely to a still greater extent, so is
this. We have here not a Whole Duty of Man, yet a Half Duty, namely the
Passive half: could we but do it, as we can demonstrate it!

"But indeed Conviction, were it never so excellent, is worthless till
it convert itself into Conduct. Nay properly Conviction is not possible
till then; inasmuch as all Speculation is by nature endless, formless, a
vortex amid vortices, only by a felt indubitable certainty of Experience
does it find any centre to revolve round, and so fashion itself into a
system. Most true is it, as a wise man teaches us, that 'Doubt of any
sort cannot be removed except by Action.' On which ground, too, let
him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain light, and prays
vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this other precept well
to heart, which to me was of invaluable service: '_Do the Duty which
lies nearest thee_,' which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty
will already have become clearer.

"May we not say, however, that the hour of Spiritual Enfranchisement is
even this: When your Ideal World, wherein the whole man has been dimly
struggling and inexpressibly languishing to work, becomes revealed, and
thrown open; and you discover, with amazement enough, like the Lothario
in _Wilhelm Meister_, that your 'America is here or nowhere'? The
Situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied by
man. Yes here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Actual,
wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhe