Chapter IV: Book III: Faith (3)

Thus it has always been. Wheresoever real government has existed, where serious struggles have been fought out, where victory has been won against mighty resistance, it has been the promise of eternal life that governed and fought and conquered. The German Protestants, formerly mentioned in these addresses, fought with faith in this promise. Did they not perhaps know that nations might also be governed with the old faith and be held in legal order, and that a good livelihood might be found under this faith also? Why, then, did their princes thus determine upon armed resistance, and why did their peoples lend themselves to it with enthusiasm? It was heaven and eternal happiness for which they gladly shed their blood. Yet what earthly power could then have penetrated into the inmost sanctuary of their souls and have been able to eradicate the faith which had now once sprung up within them, and on which alone they based their hope of salvation? It was not, therefore, their own happiness for which they struggled--of that they were already assured; it was the happiness of their children, of their grandchildren still unborn, and of all posterity. These, too, should be brought up in the same doctrine which alone seemed to them to bring salvation; they, too, should share in the salvation which had dawned for them. It was this hope alone that was threatened by the foe; for that hope, for an order of things which should bloom above their graves long after they were dead, they shed their blood thus joyfully. If we grant that they were not entirely clear to themselves, that in their designation of the noblest they verbally mistook what was within them, and with their mouths did injustice to their souls; if we willingly acknowledge that their confession of faith was not the sole and exclusive means of attaining heaven beyond the grave--yet, this, at least, is eternally true that more heaven on this side of the grave, a more courageous and more joyous lifting of the gaze above the earth, and a freer impulse of spirit have come through their sacrifice into all the life of succeeding ages; and the descendants of their opponents, as well as we ourselves, their own descendants, enjoy the fruits of their labors unto this day.

In this belief our oldest common ancestors, the parent nation of civilization, the Teutons whom the Romans called Germans, boldly opposed the advancing world-dominion of the Romans. Did they not then see before their eyes the higher bloom of the Roman provinces near them, the more refined enjoyments in them, and, in addition, laws, judgment-seats, rods, and axes in superabundance? Were not the Romans willing enough to allow them to share in all these blessings? Did they not experience, in the case of several of their own princes who had allowed themselves to be persuaded that war against such benefactors of humanity was rebellion, proofs of the lauded Roman clemency, since Rome adorned these submissive lords with kingly titles, with generalships in their armies, and with Roman fillets, and gave them, if, perchance, they had been driven out by their compatriots, maintenance and a place of refuge in their colonies? Had they no feeling for the advantages of Roman culture, as, for example, for the better organization of their armies, in which even an Arminius did not disdain to learn the trade of war? None of all these ignorances or negligences is to be charged against them. Their descendents even adopted the culture of the Romans as soon as they could do it without loss of their freedom and in so far as it was possible without impairment of their individuality. Why did they, then, thus struggle for several generations in sanguinary war, ever renewed with the same virulence? A Roman author makes their leaders ask "whether anything was then left for them except either to assert their freedom or to die before they became slaves?" Freedom meant to them that they remained Germans, that they continued to decide their affairs independently, in conformity with their national genius, and, likewise in conformity with this spirit, that they continued to go forward in their development and transmitted this independence to their posterity; slavery meant to them all the blessings which the Romans offered them, because in that case they must be something else than Germans--they might be half Romans. It is self-evident, they presuppose, that every one would rather die than become thus, and that a true German can wish to live only that he may be and remain forever a German and may train all that belong to him to be Germans also.

They have not all died; they have not seen slavery; they have bequeathed liberty to their children. All the modern world owes it to their stubborn resistance that it exists as it does. If the Romans had succeeded in subjugating them also and, as the Roman everywhere did, in eradicating them as a nation, then the entire future development of mankind would have taken a direction that we cannot imagine would have been more pleasant. We, the immediate heirs of their land, their language, and their thought, owe it to them that we be still Germans, that the stream of primitive and independent life still bear us on; to them we owe everything that we have since become as a nation; and, unless we have now perhaps come to an end, and unless the last drop of blood inherited from them is dried up in our veins, we shall owe to them all that we shall be in the future. Even the other Teutonic races, among whom are our brethren, and who have now become foreigners to us, owe to them their existence; when they conquered eternal Rome, no one of all these nations yet existed; at that time the possibility of their future origin was simultaneously won in the struggle.

These, and all others in universal history who have been of their type of thought, have conquered because the eternal inspired them, and thus this inspiration ever and of necessity prevails over him who is not inspired. It is not the might of arms nor the fitness of weapons that wins victories, but the power of the soul. He who sets himself a limited goal for his sacrifices, and who can dare no further than a certain point, surrenders resistance as soon as the danger reaches a crisis where he cannot yield or dodge. He who has set himself no limit whatsoever, but who hazards everything, even life--the highest boon that can be lost on earth--never ceases to resist, and, if his opponent has a more limited goal, he indubitably conquers. A people that is capable, though it be only in its highest representatives and leaders, of keeping firmly before its vision independence, the face from the spirit world, and of being inspired with love for it, as were our remotest forefathers, surely conquers a people that, like the Roman armies, is used merely as a tool for foreign dominion and for the subjugation of independent nations; for the former have everything to lose, the latter have merely something to gain. But even a whim can prevail over the mental attitude which regards war as a game of hazard for temporal gain or loss, and which, even before the game starts, has fixed the limit of the stake. Think, for example, of a Mohammed--not the real Mohammed of history, concerning whom I confess that I have no judgment, but the Mohammed of a distinguished French poet--who had once become firmly convinced that he was one of the extraordinary natures who are called to guide the obscure and common folk of earth, and to whom, in consequence of this first presupposition, all his whims, however meagre and limited they may really be, must necessarily appear to be great, exalted and inspiring ideas because they are his own, while everything that opposes them must seem obscure, common folk, enemies of their own weal, evil-minded, and hateful. Such a man, in order to justify this self-conceit to himself as a divine vocation, and entirely absorbed in this thought, must stake everything upon it, nor can he rest until he has trampled under foot all that will not think as highly of him as he does himself, or until his own belief in his divine mission is reflected from the whole contemporary world. I shall not say what would be his fortunes in case a spiritual vision that is true and clear within itself should actually come against him on the field of battle, but he certainly wins from those limited gamblers, for he hazards everything against those who do not so hazard; no spirit inspires them, but he is altogether inspired by a fanatical spirit--that of his mighty and powerful self-conceit.

It follows from all this that the state, as mere governance of human life proceeding in its normal peaceable course, is not a primal thing and one existing for itself, but that it is simply the means to the higher end of the eternally uniform development of the purely human in this nation; that it is only the vision and the love of this eternal development which is continually to guide the higher outlook upon the administration of the state, even in periods of calm, and which alone can save the independence of the nation when this is endangered. In the case of the Germans, among whom, as being a primitive people, this love of country was possible and, as we firmly believe, has actually existed hitherto, such patriotism could, up to our own time, count with a high degree of certainty upon the safety of its most important interests. As was the case only among the Greeks in antiquity, among the Germans the State and the nation were actually severed from each other, and each was represented separately; the former in the individual German kingdoms and principalities; the latter visibly in the Federation of the Empire, and invisibly--valid not in consequence of written law but as a sequence of a law living in the hearts of all, and in its results striking the eyes at every turn--in a multitude of customs and institutions. As far as the German language extended, every one who saw the light within its domain could regard himself as a citizen in a two-fold sense, partly of his natal city, to whose immediate protection he was recommended; and partly of the entire common fatherland of the German nation. Throughout the whole extent of this fatherland each man might seek for himself that culture which was most akin to his spirit, or he might search for the sphere of activity most suited for it; and talent did not grow into its place, like a tree, but he was permitted to search for that place. He who became estranged from his immediate surroundings through the direction taken by his culture, easily found welcome reception elsewhere; he found new friends instead of those whom he had lost; he found time and quiet in which to explain himself more accurately and perhaps to win over and to reconcile the wrathful themselves, and thus to unite the whole. No German-born prince could ever bring himself to mark off the fatherland of his subjects within the mountains or rivers where he ruled, and to regard them as bound to the soil. A truth which could not be uttered in one place might be proclaimed in another, where, perhaps, on the contrary, those truths were forbidden which were allowable in the former district; and thus, despite many instances of partiality and narrow-mindedness in the individual states, in Germany, taken as a whole, was found the utmost freedom of investigation and of communication that ever a nation possessed. Higher culture was, and remained on every hand, the result of the reciprocity of the citizens of all German states, and this higher culture then gradually descended in this form to the greater masses, who, consequently, have always, on the whole, continued to educate themselves. As has been said, no German with a German heart, placed at the head of a government, has ever diminished this essential pledge of the continuance of a German nation; and even though, in view of other primitive decisions, what the higher German patriotism must desire was not invariably to be effected, yet at least there was no direct opposition to its interests; no effort was made to undermine that love, to eradicate it, and to replace it by an antagonistic love.

But if, now, the original guidance both of that higher culture and of the national power--which should be used only in behalf of that culture and to further its continuance--the employment of German wealth and German blood is to pass from the supremacy of the German spirit to that of another, what would then necessarily result?

Here is the place where there is special need of applying the policy which we outlined in our first address, namely, to be unwilling to be deceived in regard to our own interest, and to have the courage willingly to see the truth and acknowledge it. Moreover, it is still permissible, so far as I know, to talk with one another in German about our fatherland, or at least to sigh in German, and, I believe, we should not do well if we ourselves precipitated such an interdiction and wished to lay the fetters of individual timidity on the courage which, no doubt, will already have considered the risk of the venture.

Well then, picture to yourself the presupposed new régime to be as kind and as benevolent as you will; make it good as God; will you also be able to invest it with divine understanding? Even though it may, in all earnestness, desire the highest happiness and welfare of all, will the best welfare that it can comprehend also be the welfare of Germany? I accordingly hope that I shall be perfectly understood in reference to the main point that I have presented to you today; I hope that in the course of my remarks many have thought and felt that I merely express clearly in words what has always lain within their hearts; I hope the same will be the case with the other Germans who will some day read this address. Several Germans have said approximately the same things before me, and that sentiment has lain obscurely at the basis of the opposition continually manifested against a merely mechanical establishment and estimate of the State. And now I challenge all who are acquainted with modern foreign literature to prove to me what later sage, poet, or lawgiver among them has ever given birth to a prophetic thought similar to this, which regarded the human race as being in continual progress, and which correlated all its temporal activity only with this progress; whether any one of them, even in the period when they soared most boldly to political creation, demanded from the state more than equality, internal peace, external national fame, and, when their demands reached the extreme limit, domestic happiness? If this is their highest conception, as must be deduced from all that has been said, they can attribute to us likewise no higher needs and no higher demands upon life, and--always presupposing those beneficent sentiments toward us and an absence of all selfishness and of all desire to be more than we--they believe that they have made admirable provision for us when they give us all that they alone recognize as desirable. On the other hand, that for which alone the nobler soul among us can live is then eradicated from public life, and the people, who have always shown themselves receptive toward the impulses of higher things, and the majority of whom, it might be hoped, could even be raised to that nobility, are--in so far as it is treated as they wish it to be treated--abased beneath its rank, dishonored, and blotted out, since it coalesces with the populace of the baser sort.

If, now, those higher claims upon life, together with the sense of their divine right, still remain living and potent in any one, he, with deep indignation, feels himself crushed back into those first ages of Christianity in which it was said: "Resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also." And rightly so, for as long as he still sees a cloak upon thee, he seeks an opportunity to quarrel with thee in order to take this also from thee; not until thou art utterly naked dost thou escape his attention and art unmolested by him. Even his higher feelings, which do him honor, make earth a hell and an abomination to him; he wishes that he had not been born; he wishes that his eyes may close to the light of day, the sooner the better; unceasing sorrow lays hold upon his days until the grave claims him; he can wish for those dear to him no better gift than a quiet and contented spirit, that with less pain they may live on in expectation of an eternal life beyond the grave.

These addresses lay upon you the task of preventing, by the sole means which still remains after the others have been tried in vain, the destruction of every nobler impulse that may in the future possibly arise among us and this debasement of our entire nation. They present to you a true and omnipotent patriotism, which, in the conception of our nation as of one that is eternal, and as citizens of our own eternity, is to be deeply and ineradicably founded in the minds of all, by means of education. What this education may be, and in what way it may be achieved, we shall see in the following addresses.

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ADDRESS FOURTEEN

Conclusion of the Whole

The addresses which I here conclude have, indeed, been directed primarily to you,[4] but they had in view the entire German nation; and, in intention, they have gathered about them, in the space wherein you visibly breathe, all that would be capable of understanding them as far as the German tongue extends. Should I have succeeded in casting into any bosom throbbing before my eyes some sparks which may glimmer on and take life, it is not in my thought that they remain solitary and alone, but, traversing the whole ground in common, I would gather about them similar sentiments and purposes and weld them so unitedly that a continuous and coherent flame of patriotic thought might spread and be enkindled from this centre over the soil of the fatherland and to its furthest bounds. My addresses have not been directed to this generation for the pastime of idle ears and eyes, but I desire at last to know--even as every one who is like-minded should know--whether there is anything outside us that is akin to our type of thought. Every German who still believes that he is a member of a nation, who thinks of it in grand and noble fashion, who hopes in it, and who dares, suffers, and endures for it, should at last be torn from the uncertainty of his belief; he should clearly discern whether he is right or whether he is only a fool and a fanatic; henceforth he should either continue his path with sure and joyous consciousness, or, with healthy resolution, should renounce a fatherland here below and comfort himself solely with that which is in heaven. To you, therefore, not as such-and-such persons in our daily and circumscribed life, but as representatives of the nation, and, through your ears, to the nation as a whole, these addresses appeal.

Centuries have passed since you have been convened as you are today--in such numbers, in so great, so insistent, so mutual an interest, so absolutely as a nation and as Germans. Never again will you be so bidden. If you do not listen now and examine yourselves, if you again let these addresses pass you by as an empty tickling of the ears or as a strange prodigy, no human being will longer take account of you. Hear at last for once; for once at last reflect! Only do not go this time from the spot without having made a firm resolve; let every one who hears this voice make this resolution within himself and for himself, even as though he were alone and must do everything alone. If very many individuals think thus, there will soon be a great whole uniting into a single, close-knit power. If, on the contrary, each one, excluding himself, relies on the rest and relinquishes the affair to others, then there are no others at all, for, even though combined, all remain just as they were before. Make it on the spot--this resolution! Do not say, "Yet a little more sleep, a little more slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep," until, perchance, improvement shall come of itself. It will never come of itself. He who has once missed the opportunity of yesterday, when clear perception would have been easier, will not be able to make up his mind today, and will certainly be even less able to do so tomorrow. Every delay only makes us still more inert and but lulls us more and more into gentle acquiescence to our wretched plight. Neither could the external stimulations to reflection ever be stronger and more insistent, for surely he whom these present conditions do not arouse has lost all feeling. You have been called together to make a last, determined resolution and decision--not by any means to give commands and mandates to others, or to depute others to do the work for you. No, my purpose is to urge you to do the work yourself. In this connection that idle passing of resolutions, the will to will, some time or other, are not sufficient, nor is it enough to remain sluggishly satisfied until self-improvement sets in of its own accord. On the contrary, from you is demanded a determination which is identical with action and with life itself, and which will continue and control, unwavering and unchilled, until it gains its goal.

Or is perchance the root, from which alone can grow a tenacity of purpose which takes hold upon life, utterly eradicated and vanished within you? Or is your whole being actually rarefied into a hollow shade, devoid of sap and blood and of individual power of movement, or dissolved to a dream in which, indeed, a motley array of faces arise and busily cross one another, but the body lies stiff and dead? Long since it has been openly proclaimed to our generation and repeated under every guise, that this is very nearly its condition. Its spokesmen have believed that this was declared merely in insult, and have regarded themselves as challenged to return the insults, thinking that thus the affair would resume its natural course. As for the rest, there was not the slightest trace of change or of improvement. If you have heard this, and if it was capable of rousing your indignation--well then, through your very actions, give the lie to those who thus think and speak of you. Once show yourselves to be different before the eyes of all the world, and before the eyes of all the world they will be convicted of their falsehood. It may be that they have spoken thus harshly of you with the precise intention of forcing this refutation from you, and because they despaired of any other means of arousing you. How much better, then, would have been their intentions toward you than were the purposes of those who flattered you that you might be kept in sluggish calm and in careless thoughtlessness!

However weak and powerless you may be, during this period clear and calm reflection has been vouchsafed you as never before. What really plunged us into confusion regarding our position, into thoughtlessness, into a blind way of letting things go, was our sweet complacency with ourselves and our mode of existence. Things had thus gone on hitherto, and so they continued and would continue to go. If any one challenged us to reflect, we triumphantly showed him, instead of any other refutation, our continued existence which went on without any thought or effort on our part; yet things flowed along simply because we were not put to the test. Since that time we have passed through the ordeal and it might be supposed that the deceptions, the delusions, and the false consolations with which we all misguided one another would have collapsed! The innate prejudices which, without proceeding from this point or from that, spread over all like a natural cloud and wrapped all in the same mist, ought surely, by this time, to have utterly vanished! That twilight no longer obscures our eyes, and can therefore no longer serve for an excuse. Now we stand, naked and bare, stripped of all alien coverings and draperies, simply as ourselves. Now it must appear what each self is, or is not.

Some one among you might come forward and ask me "What gives you in particular, the only one among all German men and authors, the special task, vocation, and prerogative of convening us and inveighing against us? Would not any one among the thousands of the writers of Germany have exactly the same right to do this as you have? None of them does it; you alone push yourself forward." I answer that each one would, indeed, have had the same right as I, and that I do it for the very reason that no one among them has done it before me; that I would be silent if any one else had spoken previous to me. This was the first step toward the goal of a radical amelioration, and some one must take it. I seemed to be the first vividly to perceive this--accordingly, it was I who first took it. After this, a second step will be taken, and thereto every one has now the same right; but, as a matter of fact, it, in its turn, will be taken by but one individual. One man must always be the first, and let him be he who can!

Without anxiety regarding this circumstance, let your attention rest for an instant on the consideration to which we have previously led you--in how enviable a position Germany and the world would be if the former had known how to utilize the good fortune of her position and to recognize her advantage. Let your eyes rest upon what they both are now, and let your minds be penetrated by the pain and indignation which, in this reflection, must lay hold upon every noble soul. Then examine yourselves and see that it is you who can release the age from the errors of ancient times, and that, if only you will permit it, your own eyes can be cleared of the mist that covers them; learn, too, that it has been vouchsafed to you, as to no generation before you, to undo what has been done and to efface the dishonorable interval from the annals of the German nation.

Let the various conditions among which you must choose pass before you. If you drift along in your torpor and your heedlessness, all the evils of slavery await you--deprivations, humiliations, the scorn and arrogance of the conqueror; you will be pushed about from pillar to post, because you have never found your proper niche, until, through the sacrifice of your nationality and of your language, you slip into some subordinate place where your nation shall sink its identity. If, on the other hand, you rouse yourselves, you will find, first of all, an enduring and honorable existence, and will behold a flourishing generation which promises to you and to the Germans the most glorious and lasting memory. Through the instrumentality of this new generation you will see in spirit the German name exalted to the most glorious among all nations; you will discern in this nation the regenerator and restorer of the world.

It depends upon you whether you will be the last of a dishonorable race, even more surely despised by posterity than it deserves, and in whose history--if there can be any history in the barbarism which will then begin--succeeding generations will rejoice when it perishes and will praise fate that it is just; or whether you will be the beginning and the point of development of a new age which will be glorious beyond all your expectations, and become those from whom posterity will date the year of their salvation. Bethink yourselves that you are the last in whose power this great change lies. You have heard the Germans called a unit; you have still a visible sign of their unity--an Empire and an Imperial League--or you have heard of it; among you even yet, from time to time, voices have been audible which were inspired by this higher patriotism. After you become accustomed to other concepts and will accept alien forms and a different course of occupation and of life--how long will it then be before no one longer lives who has seen Germans or who has heard of them?

What is demanded of you is not much. You should only keep before you the necessity of pulling yourselves together for a little time and of reflecting upon what lies immediately and obviously before your eyes. You should merely form for yourselves a fixed opinion regarding this situation, remain true to it, and utter and express it in your immediate surroundings. It is the presupposition, yea, it is our firm conviction, that this reflection will lead to the same result in all of you; that, if you only seriously consider, and do not continue in your previous heedlessness, you will think in harmony; and that, if you can bring your intelligence to bear, and if only you do not continue to vegetate, unanimity and unity of spirit will come of themselves. If, however, matters once reach this point, all else that we need will result automatically.

This reflection is, moreover, demanded from each one of you who can still consider for himself something lying obviously before his eyes. You have time for this; events will not take you unawares; the records of the negotiations conducted with you will remain before your eyes. Lay them not from your hands until you are in unity with your selves. Neither let, oh, let not yourselves be made supine by reliance upon others or upon anything whatsoever that lies outside yourselves, nor yet through the unintelligent belief of our time that the epochs of history are made by the agency of some unknown power without any aid from man. These addresses have never wearied in impressing upon you that absolutely nothing can help you but yourselves, and they find it necessary to repeat this to the last moment. Rain and dew, fruitful or unfruitful years, may indeed be made by a power which is unknown to us and is not under our control; but only men themselves--and absolutely no power outside them--give to each epoch its particular stamp. Only when they are all equally blind and ignorant do they fall the victims of this hidden power, though it is within their own control not to be blind and ignorant. It is true that to whatever degree, greater or less, things may go ill with us, in part depends upon that unknown power; but far more is it dependent upon the intelligence and the good will of those to whom we are subjected. Whether, on the other hand, it will ever again be well with us depends wholly upon ourselves; and surely nevermore will any welfare whatsoever come to us unless we ourselves acquire it for ourselves--especially unless each individual among us toils and labors in his own way as though he were alone and as though the salvation of future generations depended solely upon him.

This is what you have to do; and these addresses adjure you to do this without delay.

They adjure you, young men! I, who have long since ceased to belong to you, maintain--and I have also expressed my conviction in these addresses--that you are yet more capable of every thought transcending the commonplace, and are more easily aroused to all that is good and great, because your time of life still lies closer to the years of childish innocence and of nature. Very differently does the majority of the older generation regard this fundamental trait in you. It accuses you of arrogance, of a rash, presumptuous judgment which soars beyond your strength, of obstinacy, and of desire of innovation; yet it merely smiles good-naturedly at these, your errors. All this, it thinks, is based simply on your lack of knowledge of the world, that is, of universal human corruption, since it has eyes for nothing else on earth. You are now supposed to have courage only because you hope to find help-mates like-minded with yourselves and because you do not know the grim and stubborn resistance which will be opposed to your projects of improvement. When the youthful fire of your imagination shall once have vanished, when you shall have perceived the universal selfishness, idleness, and horror of work, when you yourselves shall once rightly have tasted the sweetness of plodding on in the customary rut--then the desire to be better and wiser than all others will soon fade away. They do not by any chance entertain these good expectations of you in imagination alone; they have found them confirmed in their own persons. They must confess that in the days of their foolish youth they dreamed of improving the world, exactly as you dream today; yet with increasing maturity they have become tame and quiet as you see them now. I believe them; in my own experience, which has not been very protracted, I have seen that young men who at first roused different hopes nevertheless, later, exactly fulfilled the kind expectations of mature age. Do this no longer, young men, for how else could a better generation ever begin? The bloom of youth will indeed fall from you, and the flame of imagination will cease to be nourished from itself; but feed this flame and brighten it through clear thought, make this way of thinking your own, and as an additional gift you will gain character, the fairest adornment of man. Through this clear thinking you will preserve the fountain of eternal youth; however your bodies grow old or your knees become feeble, your spirit will be reborn in freshness ever renewed, and your character will stand firm and unchangeable. Seize at once the opportunity here offered you; reflect clearly upon the theme presented for your deliberation; and the clarity which has dawned for you in one point will gradually spread over all others as well.

These addresses adjure you, old men! You are regarded as you have just heard, and you are told so to your faces; and for his own past the speaker frankly adds that--excluding the exceptions which, it must be admitted, not infrequently occur, and which are all the more admirable--the world is perfectly right with regard to the great majority among you. Go through the history of the last two or three decades; everything except yourselves agrees--and even you yourselves agree, each one in the specialty that does not immediately concern him--that (always excluding the exceptions, and regarding only the majority) the greatest uselessness and selfishness are found in advanced years in all branches, in science as well as in practical occupations. The whole world has witnessed that every one who desired the better and the more perfect still had to wage the bitterest battle with you in addition to the battle with his own uncertainty and with his other surroundings; that you were firmly resolved that nothing must thrive which you had not done and known in the same way; that you regarded every impulse of thought as an insult to your intelligence; and that you left no power unutilized to conquer in this battle against improvement--and in fact you generally did prevail. Thus you were the impeding power against all the improvements which kindly nature offered us from her ever--youthful womb until you were gathered to the dust which you were before, and until the succeeding generations, which were at war with you, had become like unto you and had adopted your attitude. Now, also, you need only conduct yourselves as you have previously acted in case of all propositions for amelioration; you need only again prefer to the general weal your empty honor in order that there may be nothing between heaven and earth that you have not already fathomed; then, through this last battle, you are relieved from all further battle; no improvement will accrue, but deterioration will follow in the footsteps of deterioration, and thus there will be much satisfaction in reserve for you.

No one will suppose that I despise and depreciate old age as old age. If only the source of primitive life and of its continuance is absorbed into life through freedom, then clarity--and strength with it--increases so long as life endures. Such a life is easier to live; the dross of earthly origin falls away more and ever more; it is ennobled to the life eternal and strives toward it. The experience of such an old age is irreconcilable with evil, and it only makes the means clearer and the skill more adroit victoriously to battle against wickedness. Deterioration through increasing age is simply the fault of our time, and it necessarily results in every place where society is much corrupted. It is not nature which corrupts us--she produces us in innocence; it is society. He who has once surrendered to the influence of society must naturally become ever worse and worse the longer he is exposed to this influence. It would be worth the trouble to investigate the history of other extremely corrupt generations in this regard, and to see whether--for example, under the rule of the Roman emperors--what was once bad did not continually become worse with increasing age.

First of all, therefore, these addresses adjure you, old men and experienced--you who form the exception! Confirm, strengthen, counsel in this matter the younger generation, which reverently looks up to you. And the rest of you also, who are average souls, they adjure! If you are not to help, at least do not interfere, this time; do not again--as always hitherto--put yourselves in the way with your wisdom and with your thousand hesitations. This thing, like every rational thing in the world, is not complicated, but simple; and it also belongs among the thousand matters which you know not. If your wisdom could save, it would surely have saved us before; for it is you who have counseled us thus far. Now, like everything else, all this is forgiven you, and you should no longer be reproached with it. Only learn at last once to know yourselves, and be silent.

These addresses adjure you men of affairs! With few exceptions you have thus far been cordially hostile to abstract thought and to all learning which desired to be something for itself, even though you demeaned yourselves as if you merely haughtily despised all this. As far as you possibly could, you held from you the men who did such things as well as their propositions; the reproach of lunacy, or the advice that they be sent to the mad-house, was the thanks from you on which they might usually count. They, in their turn, did not venture to express themselves regarding you with the same frankness, since they were dependent upon you; but their innermost thought was this, that, with a few exceptions, you were shallow babblers and inflated braggarts, dilettante who have only passed through school, blind gropers and creepers in the old rut who had neither wish nor ability for aught else. Give them the lie through your deeds, and to this end grasp the opportunity now offered you; lay aside that contempt for profound thought and learning; let yourselves be advised and hear and learn what you do not know, or else your accusers win their case.

These addresses adjure you, thinkers, scholars, and authors who are still worthy of this name! In a certain sense that reproach of the men of affairs was not unjust. You often proceeded too unconcerned in the realm of abstract thought, without troubling yourselves about the actual world and without considering how the one might be connected with the other; you circumscribed your own world for yourselves, and let the real world lie to one side, disdained and despised. Every regulation and every formation of actual life must, it is true, proceed from the higher regulating concept, and progress in the customary rut is insufficient for it; this is an eternal truth, and, in God's name, it crushes with undisguised contempt every one who is so bold as to busy himself with affairs without knowing this. Yet between the concept and the introduction of it into any individual life there is a great gulf fixed. The filling of this gulf is the task both of the men of affairs--who, however, must already first have learned enough to understand you--and also of yourselves, who should not forget life on account of the world of thought. Here you both meet. Instead of regarding each other askance and depreciating each other across the gulf, endeavor rather to fill it, each on his own side, and thus seek to construct the road to union. At last, I beg you, realize that you both are as mutually necessary to each other as head and arm are indispensable the one to the other.

In other respects as well, these addresses adjure you, thinkers, scholars, and authors who are still worthy of this name! Your laments over the general shallowness, thoughtlessness, and superficiality, over self-conceit and inexhaustible babble, over the contempt for seriousness and profundity in all classes, may be true, even as they actually are. Yet what class is it, pray, that has educated all these classes, that has transformed everything pertaining to science into a jest for them, and that has trained them from their earliest youth in that self-conceit and that babble? Who is it, pray, who still continues to educate the generations that have outgrown the schools? The most obvious source of the torpor of the age is that it has read itself torpid in the writings which you have written. Why are you, nevertheless, so continually solicitous to amuse this idle people, despite the fact that you know that they have learned nothing and wish to learn nothing? Why do you call them "the Public," flatter them as your judge, stir them up against your rivals, and seek by every means to win this blind and confused mob over to your side? Finally, in your literary reviews and in your magazines, why do you yourselves furnish them with material and example for rash judgments by yourselves judging as unconnectedly, as carelessly, as recklessly, and, for the most part, as tastelessly as even the least of your readers could? If you do not all think thus, and if among you there are still some animated by better sentiments, why, then, do not these latter unite to put an end to the evil? As to those men of affairs, in particular they have passed through your schools--you say so yourselves. Why, then, did you not at least make use of this transit of theirs to inspire in them some silent respect for learning, and especially to break betimes the self-conceit of the young aristocrat and to show him that birth and station are of no assistance in the realm of thought? If, perchance, even at that time you flattered him and exalted him unduly, now endure that for which you yourselves are responsible.

These addresses desire to excuse you on the supposition that you had not grasped the importance of your occupation; they adjure you that, from this hour, you make yourselves acquainted with this importance, and that you no longer ply your occupation as a mere trade. Learn to respect yourselves, and by your actions show that you do so, and the world will respect you. You will give the first proof of this through the amount of influence which you assume in regard to the resolution that is proposed, and through the manner in which you conduct yourselves regarding it.

These addresses adjure you, princes of Germany! Those who act toward you as though no man dared say aught to you, or had aught to say, are despicable flatterers, are base slanderers of you yourselves. Drive them far from you! The truth is that you were born exactly as ignorant as all the rest of us, and that, exactly like ourselves, you must hear and learn if you are to escape from this natural ignorance. Your share in bringing about the fate which has befallen you simultaneously with your peoples is here set forth in the mildest way and, as we believe, in the way which is alone right and just; and in case you wish to hear only flattery, and never the truth, you cannot complain regarding these addresses. Let all this be forgotten, even as all the rest of us also desire that our share in the guilt may be forgotten. Now begins a new life as well for yourselves as for all of us. May this voice penetrate to you through all the surroundings which normally make you inaccessible! With proud self-reliance it dares to say to you: You rule nations, faithful, plastic, and worthy of good fortune, such as princes of no time and of no nation have ruled. They have a feeling for freedom and are capable of it; but, because you so willed, they have followed you into sanguinary war against that which to them seemed freedom. Some among you have later willed otherwise, and, again because you so willed, they have followed you into that which to them must seem a war of annihilation against one of the last remnants of German independence. Since that time they have endured and have borne the oppressive burden of common woes; yet they do not cease to be faithful to you, to cling to you with inward devotion, and to love you as their divinely appointed guardians. Yet may you notice them, unobserved by them; set free from surroundings which do not invariably present to you the fairest aspect of humanity, may you be able to descend into the house of the citizen, into the peasant's cottage, and may you be able attentively to follow the still and hidden life of these classes, in which the fidelity and the probity which have become more rare in the higher classes seem to have sought refuge! Surely, oh, surely, you will resolve to reflect more seriously than ever how they may be helped! These addresses have proposed to you a means of assistance which they believe to be sure, thorough, and decisive. Let your councillors deliberate whether they also find it so or whether they know a better means, provided only that it be equally decisive. But the conviction that something must be done and must be done immediately, that this something must be radical and final, and that the time for half-measures and procrastination is past--this conviction these addresses would fain produce, if they could, in you personally, as they still cherish the utmost confidence in your integrity.

These addresses adjure you, Germans as a whole, whatever position you may take in society, that each one among you who can think, think first of all upon the theme that has been suggested, and that each one do for it exactly what in his own place lies nearest to him.

Your forefathers unite with these addresses and adjure you. Imagine that in my voice are mingled the voices of your ancestors from dim antiquity, who with their bodies opposed the on-rushing dominion of the world-power of Rome, who with their blood won the independence of the mountains, plains, and streams which, under your governance, have become the booty of the stranger. They call to you: Represent us; transmit to posterity our memory honorable and blameless as it came to you, and as you have boasted of it and of descent from us. Thus far our resistance has been held to be noble and great and wise; we seemed to be initiated into the secrets of the divine plan of the universe. If our race terminates with you, our honor is turned to shame and our wisdom to folly. For if the German stock was some time to be merged into that of Rome, it was better that this had been into the old Rome than into a new. We faced the former and conquered it; before the latter you have been scattered like the dust. Now, however, since affairs are as they are, you are not to conquer them with physical weapons; only your spirit is to rise and stand upright over against them. To you has been vouchsafed the greater destiny of establishing generally the empire of the spirit and of reason, and of wholly annihilating rude physical power as that which dominates the world. If you shall do this, then are you worthy of descent from us.

In these voices also mingle the spirits of your later ancestors, of those who fell in the holy struggle for freedom of religion and of faith. Save our honor, likewise, they cry to you. It was not wholly clear to us for what we fought. Besides the legitimate resolve not to allow ourselves to be dominated in matters of conscience by a foreign power, we were also impelled by a higher spirit who never revealed himself entirely unto us. To you this spirit is revealed, if you have the power to look into the spirit world, and he gazes upon you with clear and lofty eyes. The motley and confused intermingling of sensuous and of spiritual impulses is wholly to be deposed from its world-dominion; and spirit alone, absolute, and stripped of all sensuous impulses, is to take the helm of human affairs. Our blood was shed that this spirit might have freedom to develop and to grow to an independent existence. Upon you it depends to give to this sacrifice its signification and its justification by installing this spirit into the world-dominion destined for him. If this is not the final goal toward which all the development of our nation has thus far aimed, our struggles, too, become a passing, empty farce, and the freedom of spirit and of conscience that we won is an empty word, if henceforth there is to be no longer any spirit or any conscience whatsoever.

Your descendants, still unborn, adjure you. You boast of your forefathers, they cry to you, and proudly you connect yourselves with a noble lineage. Take care that the chain may not be broken in you; so do that we also may boast of you, and that through you, as through a faultless link, we may connect ourselves with the same glorious lineage. Cause us not to be compelled to be ashamed of our descent from you as a descent that is low, barbarous, and slavish, so that we must conceal our ancestry or must feign an alien name and an alien lineage, lest we be immediately rejected or trodden under foot without further test. On the next generation that will proceed from you, will depend your fame in history: honorable, if this honorably witnesses for you; but ignominious, even beyond desert, if you have no offspring to speak for you, and if it is left to the victor to write your history. Never yet has a victor had sufficient inclination or sufficient knowledge rightly to judge the conquered. The more he abases them, the more justified does he appear. Who can know what mighty deeds, what magnificent institutions, and what noble customs of many a people of antiquity have been forgotten because their posterity was subjugated, and because, ungainsaid, the conqueror made his report upon them in accordance with his interests?

Even foreign lands adjure you so far as they still understand themselves in the very least, and still have an eye for their true advantage. Indeed, there are spirits among all peoples who still cannot believe that the great promises made to the human race of a reign of justice, of reason, and of truth can be a vain and an empty phantom, and who assume, therefore, that the present iron age is but a transit to a better state. They--and all modern humanity in them--count on you. A great part of this humanity is descended from us; the rest have received from us religion and culture. The former adjure us by the soil of our common fatherland, which is also their cradle, and which they have bequeathed free to us; the latter adjure us by the culture which they have acquired from us as a pledge of a higher happiness--they adjure us to maintain ourselves as we have ever been, for their sake; and not to suffer this member, which is of so much importance, to be torn from the continuity of the race that is newly budded, lest they may painfully miss us if they some time need our counsel, our example, our cooperation toward the true goal of earthly life.