Note 25 — II Significance of this Movement—Nature of Political Passions

The divinizing of realism, of which patriotism specially consists, is expressed with all desirable candour in the ‘Addresses to the German People’ (Eighth Address); Fichte attacks religion for its claim to situate the superior life outside all interest in earthly matters: ‘It is an abuse of religion to force it, as Christianity has so often done, to extol complete indifference to the business of the State and the nation as the true religious spirit. Men,’ he declares, ‘are determined to find heaven on earth and to impregnate their earthly labours with something durable.’ He then shows, with great warmth, that this desire is the essence of patriotism, and it is evident that for him earthly labours become divine by becoming durable. This, indeed, is the only means men have discovered for divinizing their institutions.