Addresses to the German Nation by Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Translated by Jones and Turnbull from archive.org

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See other formatsADDRESSES To The German Nation By Johann Gottlieb Fichte TRANSLATED BY R. F. JONES, M.A. ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA AND G, H. TURNBULL, M.A., PH.D. PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION IN THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD b 3. CHICAGO AND LONDON THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY 1922 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Printed in Great Britain by NEILL & Co., LTD.,. EDINBURGH. CONTENTS .PAGE INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . xi TRANSLATION FIRST ADDRESS : Introduction and General Survey . \^ij SECOND ADDRESS : The General Nature of the New Education ....... 19 ; THIRD ADDRESS : Description of the New Education (continued) .... . . 36 JRTH ADDRESS^ The Chief Difference between the Germans and die other Peoples of Teutonic descent C. 52 FIFTH ADDRESS : The Consequences of the Difference that has been indicated ..... 72 SIXTH ADDRESS : German Characteristics as Ex hibited in History ...... 91 SEVI-NTH ADDRESS : A Closer Study of the Originality and Characteristics of a People .... 108 EIGHTH ADDRESS : What is a. People in the Higher Meaning of the Word, and what is Love of Father land ? I30 NINTH ADDRESS : The Starting-point that Actually Exists for the New National Education of the Germans . . . . . m . 152 TENTH ADDRESS : Further Definition of the German National Education ..... i6g vii viii ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION PAGE / ELEVENTH ADDRESS : On whom will the Carrying-out of this Scheme of Education devolve ? . .187 TWELFTH ADDRESS : Concerning the Means for our Preservation until we attain our Main Object . 205 X THIRTEENTH ADDRESS : The same subject further considered ....... 223 FOURTEENTH ADDRESS : Conclusion . . 248 TRANSLATORS NOTE THIS translation is based on Vogt s edition of Fichte s Reden an die deutsche Nation in the Bibliothek pada- gogischer Klassiker, Langensalza, 1896. Mr Jones is responsible for the translation of Addresses 4> 5> 6, 7, 8, 12, 13, and 14, Dr Turnbull for the remainder and for the introduction, which is intended primarily for the general reader. Each of us, however, has had the benefit of the other s suggestions and criticisms. We have endeavoured to make the rendering of the prin cipal technical terms uniform throughout, and have aimed at making the translation intelligible, while keeping close to the original German. We desire to express our deep gratitude to Prof. E. T. Campagnac for originally suggesting the translation, for showing the deepest interest in the work throughout, and for reading part of the MS. Dr Turnbull wishes also to thank Miss E. Purdie for a number of valuable comments on the rendering of the first address. R. F. J. G. H. T. INTRODUCTION JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE was born on May 19, 1762, at Rammenau, a little village in Upper Lusatia between Dresden and Bautzen. His father, Christian Fichte, married the daughter of Johann Schurich, a ribbon manufacturer of the neighbouring town of Pulsnitz, to whom he was apprenticed, and returned to settle with his bride in Rammenau, where he managed to make a living by following his trade as a ribbon-weaver. Johann was the eldest of a family of six sons and one daughter, and at an early age showed signs of precocious intelligence, conscientiousness, and stubbornness. By a fortunate accident the young Johann came under the notice of Baron von Miltitz, a neighbouring land owner, who took him under his protection and sent him to be educated, first at Niederau by a Pastor Krebel, with whom he remained for nearly five years, and then in 1774 to the well-known school at Pforta near Naum- burg. His patron s death early in the same year made no difference to Fichte s education, for he received finan cial support from the relatives and friends of the baron until 1784, when his allowance was stopped by the latter s widow. He remained at Pforta until 1780, when he became a theological student first at Jena and then at Leipzig. He did not complete his course, but spent the years from 1784 to 1788 as a private tutor in various Xll ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION families, being unable to keep any post for long owing, x /it is said, to his proud temper and his original ideas on education. In 1788 he was a tutor at Zurich, where he met distinguished men like Lavater, and had the good fortune to fall in love with Johanna Rahn, the daughter of the Inspector of weights and measures. In March 1790, on the termination of his teaching engagement at Zurich, Fichte went to Leipzig and, while waiting for a suitable post, began to study Kant s philo sophy for the first time, in order to give some lessons on it to a pupil who had asked for them. This study revolu-_ tionized his ideas and converted him from determinism^ to a belief in moral freedom and the inherent moral worth of man. As a result of this he took the opportunity of visiting Kant at Konigsberg in 1791, after an abortive journey to Warsaw where he had been engaged to act as private tutor to a Polish family. He was warmly received by the old philosopher, who approved of an essay entitled Critique of all Revelation, which Fichte had written and sent to him. This essay was published in 1792, after Fichte had gone, on Kant s recommendation, to Danzig to act as tutor to the family of the Count of Krockow. Owing to the publisher accidentally omitting the author s name, the essay was taken for a work of Kant, and Fichte s reputation was made. As a direct result of this he was able to marry Johanna Rahn on October 22, 1793. The tracts which the French Revolution inspired Fichte to write at this time, and which established the rights of the people on the basis of the inherent moral freedom of man, increased his fame ; but at the same time they caused moderate and conservative men to regard him as a radical and dangerous teacher. In spite of this, however, he was called to succeed Reinhold as INTRODUCTION xiii Professor of^Philosophy at Jena in 1794^ Here he won immediate success as a lecturer, owing undoubtedly in great measure to the vigour of his thought and to his moral intensity and practical earnestness. His enemies, however, especially the bigoted supporters of the tradi tional constitution and of the established form of religion, never ceased trying to undermine his position and to secure his removal. They first complained that the course of general moral lectures which he gave on Sunday mornings was an attempt to overthrow Christianity and to introduce the worship of reason in its stead ; but, meeting with no success, they then attempted to turn to his disadvantage the efforts which Fichte was making to suppress the students associations. Throughout these negotiations Fichte, who saw that these associations were productive of much harm, was animated solely by the desire to develop and cultivate the moral and intellectual powers of his pupils. Though again unsuccessful, his enemies did not cease their attacks, and were at last victorious. In an article which appeared in the Philo sophical Journal, of which he had been joint editor since 1795, Fichte identified God with the moral order of the universe. Immediately his enemies raised the cry of atheism against him ; the Saxon government condemned the Journal and demanded Fichte s expulsion from Jena. The Grand Duke of Weimar would probably have imposed merely a formal censure, but Fichte would not submit to anything that he thought encroached upon his liberty of teaching. He unwisely threatened to resign in case of reprimand, and his resignation was accepted in 1799, mucn to his own discomfiture and the delight of his enemies. From Jena Fichte went to Berlin, where he was welcomed by Schelling, the Schlegels, Schleiermacher, xiv ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION and other adherents of what is called the romantic school. The sentimental atmosphere and moral laxity of this school, however, did not suit his austere character and strict principles, and friendship gradually changed to coldness and ultimately to antagonism. In 1805 he was appointed Professor at Erlangen, but the French victories over the Prussians at Jena and Auerstadt drove him to East Prussia, where he lived at Konigsberg from 1806 to 1807. During his stay there he studied, amongst other things, the writings of Pestalozzi, whose Leonard and Gertrude he had read and approved of as early as 1788, and whose personality and teaching methods had much impressed him at their first meeting in 1793. The Peace of Tilsit in July 1807 enabled him to return to ^Berlin, and during the winter of 1807-1808 he disclosed Ihis views on the only true foundation of national pro- | sperity in the Addresses to the German Nation which he 7 delivered in the Academy building there. He also drew up an elaborate and minute plan for the proposed new university at Berlin, and helped in its organization, being appointed Professor in 1810 and Rector in 1811. The latter office, however, he resigned after holding it for only four months, his domineering manner preventing any close co-operation with his colleagues. In 1814 his wife caught a fever while attending sick and wounded in Berlin. Thanks to Fichte s devoted care she recovered, but he was himself stricken with the same fever and died on January 27, 1814. Though short and thickset in build, Fichte had never theless an imposing presence ; this he undoubtedly owed to his sharp commanding features, his keen piercing eyes, and his high forehead surmounted by thick black hair. In speech and movement alike he was quick, impetuous, decisive, and energetic. Though inclined INTRODUCTION xv to be too abstract and very terse, he was a splendid orator. He tried in every way to win his audience and to make himself perfectly clear and intelligible to them ; his voice was always attuned to the sentiments he ex pressed, and his delivery never lacked clearness and precision. His discourse swept on like the course of a tempest, rousing rather than moving the souls of his hearers and stirring them to their very depths. His flights of imagination were great and mighty, and the pictures he conjured up for his listeners, though seldom charming, were always bold and massive ; his writings, though they contained little that was particularly beauti ful, were always characterized by force and weight. Appearance, speech, action all bore witness to -.the authority of the man and to the boldness and originality of his spirit. The most striking features of Fichte s character were the intensity and resoluteness with which he maintained . his moral convictions, and his burning passion for activity. J He loved the truth. In 1792, at the very outset of his career, he solemnly declared that he was devoting himself to truth, and throughout his life he maintained that truth was the sole object of his inquiries, and that he troubled himself very little about what was likely to please his hearers or be disagreeable to them. As a thinker, he sought first principles which were indubitably certain ; as a man, he loathed lies, hated compliments and flattery, and told everyone the truth to his face. I Equally he Joved liberty ; his whole life was spejiL in } its pursuit and in its defence. His honesty was trans parent, his disinterestedness patent, and his kindness proverbial. As early as 1775 he declared that " a theft is a theft and remains a theft." He treated the students at Jena as honourable men, and understood how to xvi ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION appeal to what was best in them. He refused to canvass ~ for the chair at Jena, or to use the good offices of his - friends to clear away possible obstacles. He would not take fees from poor students, yet he always found room for them in his classes. He befriended the distressed in spite of the uncertainty of his own financial position, and imposed no condition on them save that of absolute secrecy. It is not surprising that his influence over the \f students was so powerful, and that his friendship was regarded as an inestimable gift. Nor is it surprising that, strengthened by the consciousness of the loftiest moral convictions, such a man in early life should have taken as his motto the words which Horace used in praise of Caesar Augustus : Si fractus illabatur orbis, Impavidum ferient ruinae. 1 He was convinced that this world was a land not of enjoyment, but of labour and toil, and that every joy in life should be only a refreshment and an incentive to greater effort. He felt that he must, therefore, not only think but act, and he confessed to one all-engrossing passion, the desire to influence and ennoble his fellow- men, declaring that the more he acted the happier he seemed to be. His spirit thirsted for opportunity to do great things in the world, to enable him to purchase by deeds his place in the human race. Unfortunately Fichte showed most of the character istic defects of these good qualities. He inherited from his mother a violent and impetuous nature which coa- / verted his principles into passions and, coupled, with his j absorbing desire for activity, caused him to berasJi^anOw I tactless. His passion for the truth made him suspicious 1 Odes, iii, 3, 7-8. INTRODUCTION xvii of the sincerity of others, impatient with those who did not understand his teaching, and intolerant towards those who did not admit its truth. Owing to the fierceness with which he maintained his convictions he always seemed despotic, uncompromising, and obstinate ; he himself admitted that one of the many qualities he lacked was that of accommodating himself to those around him and to people who were opposed to him in character. The rigour of his principles was tempered by few humane considerations and led men to regard him as harsh and difficult. It was undoubtedly these characteristics which set him at variance so often with j the authorities of the Church and of the State, and with ! his colleagues at Jena and Berlin, and which allowed it to be said of him, when he was Rector at the latter place, that he had no measure in anything, and treated the students for the smallest fault as though they were imps of hell. The independence of his spirit caused him to appear cold and proud ; and the cavalier manner in which he dealt with illustrious predecessors and contem poraries, besides inducing Goethe and Schillerjto nickname him the " Absolute Ego " and the " Great Ego," earned for him the reputation of being conceited, and sometimes shocked the feelings of the most friendly-disposed persons. Thus it was no rare thing to hear him say : " Here Kant, here Reinhold is wrong, and in this I have surpassed them " ; or, " No one has understood Kant ; there is only one way to understand him, that which I have explained." He had little finesse, tact, or prudence, and could, therefore, seldom brook contradiction or interference. When attacks were made upon him he was very rash and retaliated in the most provoking way, sometimes even letting himself go into violent fits of passion. This xviii ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION inevitably aroused opposition and resentment against him, and led him to commit many blunders, which even his best friends could not deny, and which caused Schiller to allude to him as " the richest source of absurdities." Thus, when the cry of atheism was raised against him at Jena, the violent threatening letter which he wrote to the minister, Voigt, irritated the Weimar government intensely, alienated the sympathies of many influential men, and effectively put an end to all possibility of retaining him at the University. The fourteen Addresses to the German Nation were delivered by Fichte during the winter of 1807-1808 in the great hall of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin before crowded audiences, and were published in April 1808. Before attempting to estimate their significance and importance, it is necessary to consider the circumstances under which they were delivered. In 1 8 o6_ Napoleon began his ram p^jglLJff a i n st. Pmssi a wh i ch^ aim ost alone among the German States, still maintained its independ ence. War was ^degkregLon October Q, and on the I4th the Prussians were severely defeated at Jena and Auer- stadt. So overwhelming were these defeats that further opposition was impossible ; on October 25 Napoleon entered Berlin and, one after another, the Prussian fortresses fell into his hands. Fichte left Berlin hurriedly on October 18 and fled to East Prussia, remaining at Konigsberg during the winter. The Russians, who had come to the aid of the overwhelmed Prussians, fought a drawn battle with the French at Eylau on February 8, 1807, but were beaten at Friedland on June 14, and made peace with France at Tilsit on July 8, 1807. The net results of the treaty for Prussia were that she was deprived of much of her territory and was forced to maintain French garrisons in her fortresses, pay INTRODUCTION xix large sums of money to France, and reduce her army to 42,000 men. Fichte returned to Berlin at the end of August, 1807, to find Prussia completely humiliated and the French troops still in occupation of the city. Like many other heroic souls, however, he could not believe that all was-"" over with Germany ; and just as Stein set himself to reform the land laws, and Scharnhorst the military organization, so Fichte took upon himself the task of arousing the German people to new life" by his Addresses^ W0 the German Nation. .Such a course demanded coiv- .jsiderable courage and determination, for the Addresses jfmaintained the ideals of liberty and justice against the despotism of Napoleon in the very face of the French army of occupation. Yet the attitude of the French authorities to the Addresses was one of complete indifrer- ence ; probably, as Fichte said, they considered education ( too insignificant and harmless a matter for them to worry about. _Even among Fichte s fellow-countrymen there were no doubt many who, like the French authorities, were completely indifferent ; others perhaps did not really understand a good deal of what the Addresses contained, and it was probably the lecturer s presence, delivery, and force of character, as much as what he said, which influenced public opinion at the time so profoundly as to draw from Stein the comment that the Addresses " had a great effect upon the feelings of the cultivated class." Whatever the real cause, however, it is certain that the Addresses were a powerful factor in the creation of that national spirit which appeared for the first time ia.lhe War of Liberation of 1813-^15. Some of the ideas and opinions expressed in the Ad- . , dresses are obviously false and cannot be accepted, while others are gross exaggerations and require considerable xx ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION modification. Little comment need be made on Fichte s conception of the German language as the sole living language, or on his notion of the part that Germany has played and must still play in the process of the sal vation of the world. His whole-hearted enthusiasm for things German inclines him at times to regard everything genuinely German as necessarily good, and everything . foreign as necessarily bad. It is obvious what evil results } would accrue from the logical development of such a conception. He greatly exaggerates the part played by Luther and by Germany in the reformation of the Church ; and it may be that his forecast of some of the good results that would follow upon the adoption of his educational reforms is fantastic and overdrawn. The fact, however, remains that these false and exaggerated ideas are but small blemishes in the work ; they are easily explained, if not justified, when we consider the desperate state of the times, the exalted aim of the lecturer, the peculiar difficulty of his task, and his enthu siastic personality. In any case they do not affect to any considerable extent the tremendous influence of the Addresses at the time, and their great importance for the understanding of subsequent periods, It is impossible within the limits of this introduction to do anything like justice to the historical and political importance of the Addresses both for Germany and for the world. It would be a most interesting and profitable study to trace, for instance, the development and practical consequences of Fichte s idea of the closed commercial State, or to consider the influence of the principle of nationality, which he so emphatically champions, upon the course of political development in Germany and in / the rest of Europe during the nineteenth century. Tjp .these and other directions it would be found that the INTRODUCTION xxi Addresses are of the utmost importance, and -fully justify Seeley s reference 1 to them as " the prophetical., or canonical book which announ.cei jind.. explains a great _ transition in modern Europe and the prophecies of which^ began to be fulfilled immediately after its publication." They_ certainly mark a definite stage in the political evolution of modern Germany, for in them Fichte appears as one of the founders of a united Germany, and from them date the regeneration of Prussia and the awakening of a national spirit in Germany./ They mark, too, an_ epoch in the history of the world, for they show Fichte as an apostle of the gospel of liberty, and proclaim that principle of nationality which had far-reaching effects on the political development of Europe in the nineteenth century .j Nor is it possible here to do justice to their tremendous effect on the development of education in Germany. Stein was certainly influenced, especially by those Ad dresses which deal mainly with education ; he became an ardent advocate of the reforms urged by Fichte, as the educational schemes of his ministry testify. That part of his political testament which concerns itself with education seems also to have been inspired by Fichte s influence. 2 More important still, however, is the fact that the Addresses influenced Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose ideas and plans for German education were carried into effect in 1809 and 1810, and who selected Fichte to be Professor of Philosophy in the new University of Berlin in 1 8 10. Humboldt s work laid the real foundations of modern German education, and it would be interesting to show how Fichte s ideas helped to mould that educa tion in its origins and subsequent development. It is not just because of their great significance in 1 Life of Stein, ii, 41. 2 Ibid., p. 28 ; cf. p. 292. xxii ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION the political and educational evolution of Germany and of the rest of Europe, however, that the Addresses are important and demand attention. The ideas they con tain are of value to-day as they were in 1808, and are i applicable not to one country alone but tp every nation. 1 1 The Addresses are essentially modern both in outlook and i in content. This is particularly true in regard to the educational principles they embody, many of which are only now being gradually accepted and put into practice. On these grounds too, therefore, the views which Fichte puts forward in his Addresses deserve close scrutiny and careful consideration. 1 It is interesting in this connection to note the conclusion of Ebert s speech at the opening of the National Assembly at Weimar, reported in the Times, February 8, 1919 : " In this way we will set to work, our great aim before us : to maintain the right of the German nation, to lay the foundation in Germany for a strong democracy, and to bring it to achieve ment with the true social spirit and in the socialistic way. Thus shall we realize that which Fichte has given to the German nation as its task. We want to establish a State of justice and truthfulness, founded on the equality of all humanity." BIBLIOGRAPHY The following books may be recommended to the general reader who desires to know more of Fichte s life and ideas. i a THE POPULAR WORKS OF J. G. FICHTE. Translated, vvitl memoir, by William Smith. 2 vols. Chapman, London, 1848-9. 2nd edition, Triibner, 1873. THE VOCATION OF MAN. Translated by William Smith. 2nd edition. Open Court Publishing Co., Chicago, 1910. FICHTE. By R. Adamson. Blackwood s Philosophical Classics. London, 1881. FICHTE. Article, by R. Adamson, in Ency. Brit., nth edition. LIFE AND TIMES OF STEIN. By J. R. Seeley. 3 vols. Cam bridge University Press, 1878. FICHTE ET SON TEMPS. By X. Leon. vol. i. Armand Colin, Paris, 1922. xxiii ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION FIRST ADDRESS INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL SURVEY I. THE addresses which I now commence I have an nounced as a continuation of the lectures which I gave three winters ago in this place, and which were published under the title : " Characteristics of the Present Age." In those lectures I showed that our own age was set in the third^reat^epoch of time, 1 an epoch which had as the motive of all its vital activities and impulses mere material t self-seeking ; that this age could comprehend and under- 1 [In accordance with his fundamental conception that the aim of human life on earth is that mankind may consciously and voluntarily order all its relations according to reason, Fichte distinguishes five epochs in the life of the human race : (i) that in which those relations are ordered by reason acting in the human race as blind_ instinct, i.e., without man having any insight into the grounds of its activity ; (2) that in which those relations are ordered by reason acting as an "external ruling authority upon the human race through its more powerful individual members, in whom reason appears as the desire to raise the whole race to their level by compelling blind faith and unconditional obedience ; (3) that in which mankind frees itself, directly from the rule of reason as an external ruling authority, indirectly from the dominion of reason as instinct, and generally from reason in any form, and gives itself over to absolute indifference towards all truth and to unrestrained licentiousness ; (4) that in which mankind becomes conscious of reason and understands its laws with clear scientific knowledge ; (5) that in which mankind, with clear conscious ness and by its own free act, orders all its relations in accordance with the laws of reason. See Lectures I. and II. on the Characteristics of the Present Age in Smith s translation of Fichte s Popular Works.] I 2 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION stand itself completely only by recognising that as the sole possible motive ; and, finally, that by this clear per ception of its own nature it was becoming deeply rooted and Immovably fixed in this its natural state of existence. Time is taking giant strides with us more than with any other age since the history of the world began. At some point within the threyears that have gpne_by, since my interpretation of the present age that epoch has come tojm end. At some point self-seeking has destroyed itself, because by its own complete development^ has lost its self and the independence of that self ; and since it would not voluntarily set itself any other aim but self, an external powehas forced upon it another and a foreign purpose. He who has once undertaken to interpret his own age must make his interpretation keep pace with the progress of that age, if progress there be. It is, there fore, my duty to acknowledge as past what has ceased to be the present, before the same audience to whom I characterized it as the present. 2. Whatever has lost its independence has at the same time lost its power to influence the course of events and to determine these events by its own will. If it remain in this statejis age, and itself with the age, are conditioned in their development by that alien power which governs its fate. From now onwards it has no longer any time of its own, but counts its years by the events and epochs of alien nations and kingdoms. From this state, in which all its past world is removed from its independent in fluence and in its present world only the merit of obed ience remains to it, it could raise itself only_ori condition that a ne^sL world should arise for it^. the creation of which would begin, and its development fill, a new epoch of its own in history. But, since it has once fallen under alien power, this new world must be so constituted that INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL SURVEY 3 it remains unperceived by that power, that it does not in any way arouse its jealousy ; nay more, that the alien power itself is induced by its own interest to put no obstacle in the way of the formation of such a world. Now if, for a race which has lost its former self, its former age and world, such a world should be created as the means of producing a new self ancfa~new age, a thorough inter pretation of such a possible age would have to give an account of the world thus created. Now for my part I maintain that there is such a world, and it is the aim of these addresses to show you its exist ence and its true owner, to bring before your eyes a living picture of it, and_to indicate the means of creating it. In this sense, therefore, these addresses will be a con tinuation of the lectures previously given on the then existing age, because they will reveal the new era which j can and must directly follow the_ destruction of the. \ kingdom of self-seeking by an alien power. __ 3. But, before I begin this task, I must ask you to assume "~ the following points so that they never escape your memory, and to agree with me upon them wherever and in so far as this is necessary. j (a) I speak for Germans simply, of Germans simply, I not recognizing, but settim^aside completely and rejecting,*\ (all the dissociating distinctions which for centuries un=-J I happy events have caused in this single nation^- You, f gentlemen, are indeed to my outward eye the first and immediate representatives who bring before my mind the beloved national characteristics, and are the visible / spark at which the flame of my address is kindled. But my spirit gathers round it the educated part of the whole German nation, from all the lands in which they are ^ scattered. It thinks ol an~3 considers our common p josition^aric^ relations ; it longs that part ol the living \ 4 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION force, with which these addresses may chance to grip you, may also remain in and breathe from the dumb printed page which alone will come to the eyes of the absent, and may in all places kindle German hearts to deckion_and action. Only of (jermans~aiT3r^simply for Germans, I said. In due course we shall show that any other mark of unity or any other national bond either never had truth and meaning or, if it had, that owing to our present position these bonds of union have been destroyed and torn from us and can never recur ; jt_js only by means of the common characteristic of being German that we can avert the downfall of our natjon which is threatened by its fusion with foreign peoples, and win back again an individuality that is self-supporting and quite incapable of any dependence upon others. With our perception of the truth of this statement its apparent conflict (feared now, perhaps, by many) with other duties and with matters that are considered sacred will completely vanish. Therefore, as I speak jmly of ^Germans_in_ general, I shall proclaim that many things concern us which do not apply in the first instance to those assembled here, just as I shall pronounce as the concern of all Germans other things which apply in the first place only to us. In the spirit, of which these addresses are the expression, I I perceive that organic unity in which no member regards the fate of another as the fate of a stranger. JTbehold that unity (which shall and must arise if we are not to and I existing. "\/ (b) I assume as hearers not such Germans as are in their whole nature completely given over to a feeling of ss they have suffered, who take comfort in this pain, luxuriate in their disconsolate grief, and think INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL SURVEY 5 thereby to compromise with the call that summons them to action ; but I assume such Germans as have already risen, or at least are capable of rising, above this justifiable pain to clear thought and meditation. I know that pain ; I have felt it as much as anyone ; I respect it. Apathy, which is satisfied if it find meat and drink and be not subjected to bodily pain, and for which honour, free dom, and independence are empty names, is incapable of it. Pain, however, exists merely to spur us on to reflec- - tion^ decision., a"ncT act ion. Jf it fails in this ultimate purpose, it robs us of reflection and of all our remaining powers, and so completes our misery ; while, moreover, as witness to our sloth and cowardice, it affords the visible proof that we deserve our misery. But I do not \ in the least intend to lift you above this pain by holding \ out hopes of any help which will come to you from out side, and by indicating all kinds of possible events and / changes which time may perchance bring about. For even if this attitude of mind, which prefers to roam in the shifting world of possibilities rather than to stick to what must be done, and would rather owe its salva tion to blind chance than to itself, did not already in itself afford evidence, as it really does, of the most criminal levity and of the deepest self-contempt, yet all hopes and indications of this kind have absolutely no applica tion to our position. Strict proof can, and in due course will, be given that no man and no god and not one of all _ the events that are within the bounds of possibility can help us, but that we alone must help ourselves if help is^"" to come to us. Rather shall I try to lift you above that pain by clear perception of our position, of our yet remain ing strength, and of the means of our salvation. _For that purpose I shall, it is true, demand of you a certain " amount of reflection, some spontaneous activity, and some 6 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION sacrifice, and reckon therefore on hearers of whom so much may be expected. The demands I make, however, are on the whole easy, and presuppose no greater amount of strength than one may, I think, expect of our age ; as for danger, there is absolutely none. (c) Since I intend to give the Germans, as such, a clear view of their present position, I shall assume ^asjhearers such as are dispo^e_cLto__se^_thin^s_j3f this sort with their ownjpyes^and by no means such as find it easier in their consideration of these matters to have foisted upon them a strange and foreign eyeglass, which is either deliber ately intended to deceive, or never properly suits a Ger man eye, becausTTrtas a different angle of vision and is not_fine_ enough. Moreover, I presuppose that such hearers, when looking at these things with their own eyes, will have the courage to look honestly at what does exist and to admit candidly to themselves what they see, and that they either have conquered already, or at least are capable of conquering, tEe~~tehdency (frequently manifested) to deceive oneself concerning one s own affairs, and to present to the jnind a less displeasing picture o_them than is consistent with the truth. This tendency is a cowardly flight from one s own thoughts ; and it is a childish attitude of mind which seems to believe that, if only it does not see its misery, or at least does not admit that it sees it, this misery will thereby be removed in reality, even as it is removed in thought. n the other hand, it is manly courage to look evil full in the face, to compel it to make a stand, to scrutinize it calmly, coolly, and freely, and to resolve it into its com ponent parts. Moreover, by this clear perception alone is it possible to master evil and to proceed with sure step in the fight against it. For the man who sees the whole in each part always knows where he stands, and is sure INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL SURVEY 7 of his ground by reason of the insight he has once gained ; whereas another man, lacking sure clue or definite cer tainty, gropes blindly in a dream. Why, then, should we be afraid of this clear perception ? Evil does not become less through ignorance, nor increase through knowledge ; indeed it is only by the latter that it can be cured. But the question of blame shall not be raised here. Let sloth and self-seeking be censured with bitter reprimand, with biting sarcasm and cutting scorn, and let them be provoked, if to nothing better, at least to bitter hatred of him who gives the reminder such hatred is at any rate a powerful impulse ; let this be done, so long as the inevitable result, the evil, is not fully accom plished, and so long as salvation or mitigation may still be expected from any improvement. But, when this evil is so complete that we are deprived of even the pos sibility of sinning again in the same way, it is useless and looks like malicious joy to continue to rail against a sin that can no longer be committed. The consideration < immediately drops out of the sphere of ethics into that of history, for which freedom is ended, and which regards an event as the inevitable consequence of what has gone before. For our addresses there remains no other view of the present than this last, and we shall therefore never adopt any other. ^v This attitude of mind, therefore, that we consider ourselves simply Germans, that we be not held captive even by pain itself, that we wish to see the truth and have the courage to look it in the face, I presuppose and reckon upon in every word that I shall say. If, therefore, any- one should bring another attitude of mind to this meeting, he would have to attribute solely to himself the unpleasant feelings which might be caused him here. Let this then be said once for all, and finished with. I proceed now 8 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION to my other task, namely, to put before you in a general survey the contents of all the addresses that are to follow. 4. At some point, I said at the beginning of my address, self-seeking has destroyed itself by its own complete development, because thereby if hasjtost its self and the power of fixing its aims independently. This destruction of self-seeking, now accomplished, constitutes both that progress of the age which I have mentioned and the com pletely new ^ event which, in my opinion, has made a continuation of my previous description of that age both possible and necessary. This destruction would, therefore, be our real present, to which our new life in a new world (the existence of which I likewise maintained) would have to be directly linked. It would, therefore, be also the proper starting-point for my addresses, and I should have to show above all how and why such a destruction of self-seeking must result inevitably from its highest develop- 1 ment. * Self-seeking is most highly developed when, after it has first affected, with insignificant exceptions, the whole body of subjects, it thereupon masters the rulers and becomes their sole motive in life. In such a government there , arises first of all, outwardly, the neglect of all the ties by j which its own safety is bound up with the safety of other * States, the abandoning of the whole, of which it is a part, solely in order that it may not be roused from its slothful Asleep, and the sad illusion of self-seeking that it has peace, ) if only its own frontiers are not attacked ; then, inwardly, (that feeble handling of the reins of State which calls itself in alien words humanity, liberality, and popularity, but which in German is more j^uiy_aJlecLslackness and unworthy conduct. When it masters the rulers too, I said. A people can INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL SURVEY 9 be completely corrupted, i.e., self-seeking for self- seeking is the root of all other_corruptipn- and yet at the same time not only endure, but even outwardly accomplish splendid deeds, provided only that its govern ment be not also corrupt. Indeed, the latter may even outwardly act treacherously, disloyally, and dishonourably, if only it have inwardly the courage to hold on to the reins of government with a strong hand and to win for itself the greater fear. But where all the circumstances I have mentioned are combined, the commonwealth "- collapses at the first serious attack which is made upon it, and just as it first disloyally severed itself from the 7*Li body of which it was a member, so now its own members, f)L** who are restrained by no fear of it and are spurred on by the greater fear of a foreign power, cut themselves off from it with the same disloyalty and go each his own way. At this, the greater fear once more seizes those who now remain isolated ; and where they gave sparingly and most unwillingly to the defender of their country, to the enemy they give abundantly and with a forced look of cheer fulness. Later on, the rulers, abandoned and betrayed on all sides, are compelled to purchase their further exis tence by submission and obedience to foreign schemes ; and so those, who in battle for their country threw away their arms, now learn to wield those same arms bravely under foreign colours against their mother - country. Thus it comes about that self-seeking is destroyed by its\ own complete development ; and upon those who would 1 not voluntarily set themselves any other aim but self, j another aim is imposed by alien power. / 5. No nation which has sunk into this state of depend ence can raise itself out of it by the means which have usually been adopted hitherto. Since resistance was use less to it when it was still in possession of all its powers, io ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION what can such resistance avail now that it has been deprived of the greater part of them ? What might previously have availed, namely, if its government had held the reins strongly and firmly, is now no longer appli cable, because these reins now only appear to rest in its hand, for this very hand is steered and guided by an alien hand. Such a nation can no longer depend upon ^ffi^.-flfl^ ^ r ^"^y ag little on the rnnqnernr., who would be just as thoughtless, just as cowardly and weak as that nation itself once was, if he did not hold fast to the advan tages he had won, and exploit them in every way. Or if in course of time he were ever to become so thoughtless and cowardly, he also would perish, like ourselves ; but not to our advantage, for he would be the prey of another conqueror, and we, as a matter of course, the insignificant addition to that prey. If^Jiowever, a nation so fallen <were to be able to save herself, it would have to be by j means of something completely new and never previously I employed, namely, by the creation of a totally new order / of things. Let us see, therefore, what in the previously u existing order of things was the reason why such an order had inevitably to come to an end at some time or other, so that in the opposite of this reason for its down fall we may find the new element which must be intro duced into the age, in order that by its means the fallen nation may rise to a new life. 6. On investigating this reason we find that in every previous system of government the interest of the indi vidual in the community was linked to his interest in himselfjby^ ties, which at some point were so completely severed that his interest in the community absolutely ceas_ed. Thesejties were those_of.fear and hope concern ing the interests of the individual in relation to the fate of the community both in the present and in some INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL SURVEY n future life. The enlightenment of the understanding, with its purely material calculations, was the force which destroyed the connection established by religion between some future life and the present, and which at the same time conceived that such substitutes and supplements of the moral sense as love of fame and national honour were but illusory phantoms. It was the weakness of s governments which removed the individual s fear for his < & **- own interests even in this life (in so far as they depended , upon his behaviour towards the community) by frequently j C J^ allowing neglect of duty to go unpunished. Similarly, *> it rendered the motive of hope ineffective by satisfying it frequently on quite different grounds and principles, without heed to services rendered to the community. Such were the ties which at some point were complete/y severed ; and it was this severance that caused the breaking- up of the commonwealth. Henceforth it matters not how industriously the con- ^j- queror may do that which he alone can do, namely, ,j^ link up again and strengthen the latter part of the binding tie fear and hope for this present life. He alone will profit thereby, and not we at all ; for so surely as he per ceives his advantage will he link to this renewed bond first and foremost only his own interests. Ours he will further only in so far as their preservation can serve as a means to his own ends. For a nation so ruined, fear and hope are henceforth completely destroyed, because control over them has now slipped from her hands, and because she herself indeed has to fear and hope, but no one hence forth either fears her or hopes for aught from her. There remains nothing for her but to find an entirely different and new binding tie that is superior to fear and hope, in_ order to link up the welfare of her whole being: with the ^. .. -t- o self-interest of each of her members. 12 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION 7. Above the material motive of fear or hope, and bordering immediately upon it, there is the spiritual motive of moral approval or disapproval, and the higher feeling of pleasure or displeasure at the condition of our selves and of others. The physical eye, when accustomed to cleanliness and order, is troubled and distressed, as though actually hurt, by a spot which indeed causes the body no actual injury, or by the sight of objects lying in chaotic confusion ; while the eye accustomed to dirt and disorder is quite comfortable under such circumstances. So, too, the inner mental eye of man can be so accustomed and trained that the very sight of a muddled and dis orderly, unworthy and dishonourable existence of its own or of a kindred race causes it intense pain, apart from anything there may be to fear or to hope from this for its own material welfare. This pain, apart again from material fear or hope, permits the possessor of such an eye no rest until he has removed, in so far as he can, this condition which displeases him, and has set in its place that which alone can please him. /For the possessor of such an eye, because of this stimulating feeling of approval or disapproval, the welfare of his whole environment is bound up inextricably with the welfare of his own wider / self, which is conscious of itself only assart of the whole I and can ^endure. Itself only when the whole" is ^pleasing. To educate itself to possess"sucnan eye will, therefore,, be assure meafl.5, and ^Hdeed the_only_jneans left to a I nation which has lost her independence and with it all influence over public fear and hope, of rising again into life fromjdi^j^itiuclioji^lirhRS suffered, and of entrusting her national welfare, which since her downfall neither God nor man has heeded, with confidence to this new and higher feeling that has arisen. _It follows, then, .tijat (the means of salvation which I promised to indicate con^ INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL SURVEY 13 of an entirely new self ? which niayj^ have existed before perhaps in individuals as an exception 7 Fut never as a /tnriversalTa^^ and in the _ education of the nation, whose former life has died out and become jthe^supplement of an alien life, to a com pletely new life, which shall either remain her exclusive __ possession or, if it must go forth from her to others, - shall at least continue whole and undiminished in spite __ ,of infinite "division. _Jn a word, it is a total change of ._ the existing system of education that I propose as the sole means" oi preserving the existence^of the German . .nation, y 8. That children must be given a good education has been said often enough, and has been repeated too often even in our age ; and it would be a paltry thing if we, too, for our part wished to do nothing but say it once again. Rather will it be our duty, in so far as we think we can [ accomplish something new, to investigate carefully and \ definitely what education hitherto has really lacked, and to suggest what completely new element a reformed i system must add to the training that has hitherto existed. After such an investigation we must admit that the existing education does not fail to bring before the eyes of the pupils some sort of picture of a religious, moral, and law-abiding disposition and of order in all things and good habits, and also that here and there it has faithfully ex horted them to copy such pictures in their lives. With very rare exceptions, however and these were, moreover, not the outcome of this education (because otherwise they must have appeared, and that too as the rule, amongst all who received such instruction), but were occasioned by other causes with these very rare exceptions, I say, the pupils of this education have in general followed, not those moral ideas and exhortations, but the imputes 14 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION of self-seeking which developed in them spontaneously and without any assistance from education. This proves beyond dispute that the system may, indeed, have been able to fill the memory with some words and phrases and the cold and indifferent imagination with some faint and feeble pictures ; but that it has never succeeded in making its picture of a moral world-order so vivid that the pupil was filled with passionate love and yearning for that order, and with such glowing emotion as to incite him j to realize it in his life emotion before which self-seeking [falls to the ground like withered leaves. It also proves this education to have been far from reaching right down to the roots of real impulse and action in life, and from ! training them; for these roots, neglected by this blind j and impotent system, have everywhere developed wild, I as best they could, yielding good fruit in a few who I were inspired by God, but evil fruit in the majority. It is for the present, then, quite sufficient to describe this education by these its results, and for our purpose we can spare ourselves the wearisome task of analysing the inner sap and fibre of a tree whose fruit is now fully ripe and lies fallen before the eyes of all, proclaiming most clearly and distinctly the inner nature of its creator. Strictly speaking, according to this view, the present system has been by no means the art of educating men. /"This, indeed, it has not boasted of doing, but has very / often frankly acknowledged its impotence by demanding I to be given natural talent or genius as the condition of I its success. Rather does such an art remain to be dis covered, and this discovery should be the real task of the new education. What was lacking in the old system , namely, an influence penetrating to the roots of vital I impulse and action the new education must supply. I f Accordingly, as the old system was able at best to train INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL SURVEY 15 some part of man, so the new must train man himself, and must make the training given, not, as hitherto, the pupil s possession, but an integral part of himself. &* 9. Moreover, education, restricted in this way, has been brought to bear hitherto only on the very small minority of classes which are for this reason called educated, whereas the great majority on whom in very truth the commonwealth rests, the people, have been almost entirely neglected by this system and abandoned to blind chance. By means of the new education we want to _,, * .- _ r __ , mould the Germans into a corporate body, which shall _ be stimulated and animated in all its individual members by the same interest. If by this means we wanted, indeed, to mark off an educated class, which might perhaps be animated by the newly developed motive of moral appro val, from an uneducated one, then the latter would desert us and be lost to us ; because the motives of hope and fear, by which alone influence might be exercised over it, would work no longer with us but against us. _Sp_ there is nothing left for us but just to apply the new system to every German without exception, so that it is not the education, of a single class, but the education of the nation, simply as such and without excepting any of its individual mem- bers._ In this, that is to say in the training of man, to take real pleasure in what is right, all distinction of classes, which may in the future find a place in other branches of development, will be completely removed and vanish. In__this way there will grow up among us, . not popular education, but real German national education. 10. I shall prove to you that a system of education such as we desire has actually been discovered and is already being practised, so that we have nothing to do but to accept what is offered us. As I promised you con cerning the means of salvation that I should propose, 16 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION this demands undoubtedly no greater amount of energy than can reasonably be expected of our generation. To that promise I added another, namely, that so far as danger is concerned there is none at all in our proposal, because the self-interest of the power that rules over us demands that the carrying-out of such a proposal should be assisted rather than hindered. I consider it appro priate to speak my mind clearly on this point at, once in this first address. It is true that in ancient as in modern times the arts of corrupting and of morally degrading the conquered have very frequently been used with success as a means of ruling. By lying fictions, and by skilful confusion of ideas and of language, princes have been libelled to the people, and peoples to princes, in order that the two parties, because of their dissension, might the more surely be controlled. All the impulses of vanity and of self- interest have been cunningly aroused and fostered, so as to make the conquered contemptible, and thus to crush them with something like a good conscience. But it would be a fatal error to propose this method with us Germans. Apart from the tie of fear and hope, the coherence of that part of the outside world with which we have now come into contact is founded on the motives of honour and of national glory. The clear vision of the German, however, has long since come to the unshakable i conviction that these are empty illusions, and that no injury or mutilation of the individual is healed by the glory of the whole nation, and we shall indeed, if a wider view of life be not brought before us, probably become dangerous preachers of this very natural and attractive doctrine. Without, therefore, taking to ourselves any new corruption, we are already in our natural condition a harmful prey ; only by carrying out the proposal INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL SURVEY 17 that has been made can we become a wholesome one. Then the outside world, as certainly as it knows its own interests, will be guided by them, and prefer to have us in the latter state rather than in the former. 11. Now in making this proposal my address is directed especially towards the educated classes in Germany, for . I hope that it will be intelligible to them first. My pro posal is first and foremost that they become the authors of this new creation, thereby, on the one hand, reconciling the world to their former influence, and, on the other, deserving its continuance in the future. We shall see in the course of these addresses that up to the present all human progress in the German nation has sprung from the people, and that to it, in the first instance, great national affairs have always been brought, and by it have been cared for and furthered. Now, for the first time, therefore, it happens that the fundamental reconstruction of the nation is offered as a task to the educated classes, and if they were really to accept this offer, that, too, would happen for the first time. We shall find that these classes cannot , calculate how long it will still remain in their power to place themselves at the head of this movement, since it is now almost prepared and ripe for proposal to the people, and is being practised on individuals from among the people ; and the people will soon be able to help themselves without any assistance from us. The result of this for us^i will simply be that the present educated classes and their 11 descendants will become the people ; while from among W the present people another more highly educated class / will arise. 12. Finally, it is the general aim of these addresses to bring courage and hope to the suffering, to proclaim joy in the midst of deep sorrow, to lead us gently and softly through the hour of deep affliction. This age is to me as a 1 8 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION shade that stands weeping over its own corpse, from which it has been driven forth by a host of diseases, unable to tear its gaze from the form so beloved of old, and trying in despair every means to enter again the home of pestilence. Already, it is true, the quickening breezes of that other world, which the departed soul has entered, have taken it unto themselves and are surrounding it with the warm breath of love ; the whispering voices of its sisters greet it with joy and bid it welcome ; and already in its depths it stirs and grows in all directions towards the more glorious form into which it shall develop. But as yet the soul has no feeling for these breezes, no ear for these voices or if it had them, they have disappeared in sorrow for the loss of mortal form ; for with its form the soul thinks it has lost itself too. What is to be done with it ? The dawn of the new world is already past its breaking ; already it gilds the mountain tops, and shadows forth the coming day. I wish, so far as in me lies, to catch the rays of this dawn and weave them into a mirror, in which our grief-stricken age may see itself ; so that it may believe in its own existence, may perceive its real self, and, as in prophetic vision, may see pass by its own develop ment, its coming forms. In the contemplation of this, the picture of its former life will doubtless sink and vanish ; and the dead body may be borne to its resting-place without undue lamenting. Cilllctll 3f the \ ristics, I i n CY rT * SECOND ADDRESS THE GENERAL NATURE OF THE NEW EDUCATION 13. THESE addresses should lead you first of all, and with you the whole nation, to a clear perception of the remedy which I have proposed for the preservation of the German nation. Such a remedy follows from the nature of age as well as of the German national characteristics and must in turn influence the age and the moulding of those national characteristics. This remedy, therefore, does not become perfectly clear and intelligible until it is compared with the latter, and these with it, and both are represented in complete connection with each other. For these tasks time is needed ; perfect clearness, there fore, is to be expected only at the end of our addresses. But, since we must begin at some point, it will be most convenient first of all to consider the inner nature of that remedy by itself, apart from its relations in time and space. Our address to-day, therefore, will be devoted to this task. The remedy indicated was an absolutely new system of German national education, such as has never existed in any other nation. In the last address this new educa tion, as distinguished from the old, was described thus : the existing education has at most only exhorted to good order and morality, but these exhortations have been unfruitful in real life, which has been moulded on prin- 19 20 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION ciples that are quite different and completely beyond the influence of that education ; in contrast to this, the new education must be able surely and infallibly to~ mould and determine according to rules the real vital impulses and actions of its pupils. 14. Now perchance someone might -say, as indeed those who administer the present system of education almost without exception actually do say : " What more should one expect of any education than that it should point out what is right to the pupil and exhort him earnestly to it ; whether he wishes to follow such exhorta tions is his own affair and, if he does not, his own fault ; he has free will, which no education can take from him." Then, in order to define more clearly the new education which I propose, I should reply that that very recognition pf, and reliance upon, free will in the pupil is the first listake of the old system and the clear confession of its itnpotence and futility. For, by confessing that after all its most powerful efforts the will still remains free, that is, hesitating undecided between good and evil, it confesses that it neither is able, nor wishes, nor longs to fashion the will and (since the latter is the very root of man) man himself, and that it considers this altogether impossible. On the other hand, the new education must ; f consist essentially in this, that it completely destroys / freedom of will in the soil which it undertakes to cultivate, \\ and produces on the contrary strict necessity in the I \ decisions of the will, the opposite being impossible. \ Such a will can henceforth be relied on with confidence and certainty. All education aims at producing a stable, settled, and steadfast character, which no longer is developing, but is, and cannot be other than it is. If it did not aim at such a character it would be, not education, but some GENERAL NATURE OF NEW EDUCATION 21 aimless game ; if it did not produce such a character it would still be incomplete. He who must still exhort himself, and be exhorted, to will the good, has as yet no firm and ever-ready will, but wills a will anew every time he needs it. But he who has such a stable will, wills what he wills for ever, and cannot under any cir- cumstances will otherwise than he always wills. For him freedom of the will is destroyed and swallowed up in necessity. The past age had neither a true conception of education for manhood nor the power to realize that conception. It showed this by wanting to improve man kind by warning sermons, and by being angry and scolding when these sermons were of no avail. Yet how could they avail aught ? Before the warning, and independent of it, the will of man has already its definite bent. If this agrees with your exhortation, the latter comes too late ; without it he would have done what you exhort him to. If this bent and your exhortation are in opposi tion, you may at most bewilder him for a few moments ; when the time comes, he forgets himself and your exhorta tion, and follows his natural inclination. If you want to influence him at all, you must do more than merely talk to him ; you must fashion him, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than you wish him to will. It is idle to say : Fly for he has no wings, and for all your exhortations will never rise two steps above the ground. But jievelop ? if you can., fcis. spiritual wings ; let him exercise them and make them strong, and without any exhortation from you he will want, and will be able, to do nothing but fly. 15. The^new education must produce^this stable and unh^sitat ing -wil Itjnusljtself inevitably crea_.the necessity t which it aims. Those who in the past became good did so thanks 22 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION to their natural disposition, which outweighed the in fluence of their bad environment, and not because of their education in any way, for otherwise all the pupils would have become good. Those who went to the bad did so just as little because of education, for otherwise all the pupils would have been corrupted ; they went to the bad of themselves, thanks to their natural disposi tion. In this respect education was simply futile, and not pernicious at all ; the real formative agency was spiritual nature. Henceforth education for manhood must be taken from the influence of this mysterious and incalculable force and put under the direction of a deliber ate art, which will surely and infallibly accomplish its purpose with everyone entrusted to it ; or which, if somehow it does not accomplish it, will at least know that it has not done so, and that therefore the training is still incomplete. The education proposed by me, therefore, I is to be a reliable and deliberate art for fashioning in iman a stable and infallible good will. That is its first \characteristic. 1 6. Moreover, man can will only what he loves ; his I love is the sole and at the same time the infallible motive \ of his will and of all his vital impulses and actions. ^Hitherto, in its education of the social man the art of the State assumed, as a sure and infallible principle, that everyone loves and wills h 1 1 nwn rn algrial welfare . To this natural love it ardfkjall^Jinked, by means of the motives of fear and hope, that good will which it desired, namely, interest in the-eom^Kii^weaL Anyone who has become outwardly a harmless or even useful citizen as a result of such a system of education remains, nevertheless, inwardly a bad man ; for badness consists essentially in loving solely one s own material welfare and in being influenced only by the motives of fear or hope for that GENERAL NATURE OF NEW EDUCATION 23 welfare, whether in the present or in some future life. Apart from this fact, we have already seen that this method is no longer applicable to us, because the motives of fear and hope serve no longer with us but against us, and material love of self cannot be turned to our advantage in any .way. We are, therefore, compelled by necessity to wish to mould men who are inwardly and fundamen tally good, since it is through such men alone that the German nation can still continue to exist, whereas through bad men it will inevitably be absorbed in the outside world. Therefore, in place of that love of self, with which nothing for our good can be connected any longer, we must set up and establish in the hearts of all those whom we wish to reckon among our nation that other kind of love, which is concerned directly with the good, tor itsowjq.sake. We have already seen that love of the good, simply as such and not for the sake of any advantage to our selves, takes the form of pleasure in it ; a pleasure so intense that a man is thereby stimulated to realize the good in his life. It is this intense pleasure, therefore,?) which the new education should produce as its pupil s|| stable and constant character. Then this pleasure itself would inevitably be the foundation of the pupil s constant good will. 17. A pleasure that stimulates us to bring about a certain state of affairs which does not yet actually exist pre supposes an iniage of that state which, previous to its actual existence, hovers before the mind and attracts that pleasure which stimulates to realization. This pleasure, therefore, presupposes in the individual who is to be affected by it the power to create spontaneously such images, which are independent of reality and not copies of it, but rather its prototypes. I must now speak of this power, and I 24 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION beg you during the consideration of it not to forget that an image created by this power can please simply as an image, and as one in which we feel our creative energy, without being for that reason taken as a proto type of reality and without pleasing to such a degree that it stimulates to realization. The latter is quite a different and our own special goal, of which we shall not fail to speak later ; but the former is simply the preliminary condition for the attainment of the true ultimate aim of education. 1 8. That power to create spontaneously images, which are not simply copies of reality, but can become its pro totypes, should be the starting-point for the moulding of the race by means of the new education. To create images spontaneously, I said, and in such a way that the pupil will produce them by his own power ; but not in deed that he will merely be capable of receiving passively the image presented to him by education, of understanding it sufficiently, and of reproducing it just as it is presented to him, as if it were a question simply of the existence of such an image. The reason for demanding self- activity in regard to that image is this ; only on that condition can the image created engage the active pleasure of the pupil. For it is one thing merely to allow oneself to be pleased at something and to have nothing against it ; such passive pleasure can arise at best only from passive submission. But it is quite another thing to be so affected by pleasure at something that this pleasure becomes productive and stirs up all our energy to the act of creation. We speak not of the former, which happened no doubt even in the old education, but of the latter. Now, this pleasure will be kindled only by the pupil s self-activity being stimulated at the same time and becoming manifest to him in the given object, GENERAL NATURE OF NEW EDUCATION 25 so that this object pleases not only in itself, but also as an object of the manifestation of mental power. This pleases directly, inevitably, and invariably. 19. This creative mental activity which is to be \ developed in the pupil is undoubtedly an activity accord- j ing to rules, which become known to the active pupil 1 until he sees from his own direct experience that they / alone are possible that is, this activity produces know- I / ledge, and that, too, of general and infallible laws. More- * over, in the free development that begins at this point it is impossible to undertake anything contrary to the law, and no act results until the law is obeyed. Even if, therefore, this free development should begin at first with blind efforts, it must still end in more extensive knowledge of the law. This training, therefore, in its final result, is the training of the pupil s faculty of know ledge, and, of course, not historical training in the actual condition of things, but the higher and philosophical training in the laws which make that actual condition of things inevitable. The pupil learns. I add : the pupil learns willingly and with pleasure, and there is nothing he would rather do than learn, so long as the effort lasts ; for while he is learning his activity is spontaneous, and in this he has directly the greatest possible pleasure. Here we have found an outward\ sign of true education, at once obvious and infallible; A namely, that every pupil on whom this education is \ brought to bear, without exception and irrespective of differences in natural talent, learns with pleasure and love, / purely for the sake of learning and for no other reason. We have discovered the means of kindling this pure love of learning ; it is to- stimulate directly the spontaneous activity of the pupil and to make this the basis of all knowledge, so that whatever is learnt is learnt through it.. 26 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION The first important point in the art of education is just to stimulate this personal activity of the pupil in something known to us. If we succeed in this, it is simply a question of starting from that and of maintaining the stimulated activity in ever new life. This is possible only where progress is regular, and where every mistake in education is discovered immediately through the failure of what was intended. We have, therefore, found / also the link whereby the intended result is inseparably / connected with the method planned, namely, the eternal, universal, and fundamental law of man s mental nature, I that he must directly engage in mental activity. 20. Should anyone, misled by our usual daily experi ence, doubt the very existence of such a fundamental law, we would remind him over and over again that man is indeed by nature merely material and self-seeking, so long as immediate necessity and present material need spur him on, and that he does not let any spiritual need or feeling of consideration prevent him from satisfying / that material need. But when it is satisfied, he has little inclination to let his fancy dwell on the painful image of it, or to keep it in his mind. He is much more inclined to free his thoughts and turn them without restraint to the consideration of whatever attracts the attention of his senses. Nor, indeed, does he scorn a poetic flight to ideal worlds, for he has by nature but little interest in the temporal, in order that his taste for the eternal may have scope for development. This is proved by the history of all ancient peoples, and by the various observations and discoveries which have come down to us from them. It is proved in our day by the observation of races that are still savage, provided, of course, their climate does not treat them far too unkindly, and by the observation of our own children. It is proved even by GENERAL NATURE OF NEW EDUCATION 27 the candid confession of the opponents of ideals, who com plain that it is a far more disagreeable business to learn names and dates than to rise into this empty (as it appears to them) world of ideas ; but who would themselves, it seems, if they might indulge, rather do the latter than the former. In place of this natural freedom from care there appears anxiety, in which tomorrow s hunger and all possible future states of hunger in their yhole long series hang over even him who is satiated, as the one thing that occupies his mind and evermore goads and drives him on. In our age this is caused artificially, in the Boy by the repression of his natural freedom from care, in the man by the endeavour to be considered prudent, a reputation which falls to the lot only of him who does not lose sight of that point of view for a moment. This, then, is not the natural disposition with which we should have to reckon, but a corruption imposed by force on reluctant nature, which vanishes when that force is no longer applied. 2 1 . This education, which stimulates directly the mental activity of the pupil, produces knowledge, we said above. This gives us the opportunity of distinguishing still more clearly the new education from the old. //The new educa- 1 - tion, in fact, aims especially and directly only at stimulat- \ ing regular and progressive mental activity.)/ Knowledge, as we saw above, results only incidentally and as an inevitable consequence. Now, if it is only in such knowledge that our pupil can conceive the image of real life which shall stimulate him to serious activity when he becomes a man, knowledge is certainly an important part of the training which is to be obtained. Yet it cannot be said that the new education aims directly at such knowledge ; knowledge is only incidental to it. On the other hand, the old education aimed definitely 28 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION at knowledge, and at a certain amount of some subject of knowledge. Besides, there is a great difference between that kind of knowledge which results incidentally from the new education and that at which the old education aimed. vjThe former results in knowledge of the laws which condition all possible mental activity. For instance, if the pupil tries in free fancy to enclose a space with straight lines, this is the first stimulation of his mental activity. If in these attempts he discovers that he cannot enclose a space with fewer than three straight lines, this is the incidental knowledge resulting from another quite different activity, that of the faculty of knowledge, which restricts the free power first stimulated. This education, therefore, results at the very outset in know ledge which transcends all experience, which is abstract, absolute, and strictly universal, and which includes within itself beforehand all subsequently possible experience. On the other hand, the old education was concerned, as a rule, only with the actual qualities of things as they are and as they should be believed and noted, without anyone being able to assign a reason for them. It aimed, therefore, at purely passive reception by means of the power of memory, which was completely at the service of things. It was, therefore, impossible to have any idea of the rnind as an independent original principle ..af jthingsjthemselves. Modern education must not think it can defend itself against this reproach by appealing to its oft-declared contempt for mechanical rote-learning and to its well- known masterpieces in the Socratic manner. On this point it was fully informed long ago from another source that these Socratic reasonings are also learned by heart purely mechanically, and that this is a much more dan gerous form of rote-learning, because it makes the pupil who does not think appear capable of thinking. It was GENERAL NATURE OF NEW EDUCATION 29 informed, too, that no other result was possible with the material it employed to develop spontaneous thought, and that for this purpose one must commence with entirely different material. This quality of the old education shows clearly why the pupil generally learned unwillingly, and therefore slowly and but little, and why, because learning itself was not attractive, extraneous motives had to be introduced ; it also shows the reason for the exceptions to the rule hitherto. Memory, employed alone and without serving any other purpose in the mind, is a passive condition rather than an activity of the mind, and it is easy to understand that the pupil will be very unwilling to accept this passive state. Besides, acquaintance with things and with the properties of_ things which are quite strange, and which have not the slightest interest for him, is a poor recompense for the passivity inflicted on him. His aversion, therefore, had to be overcome by holding out hopes of the usefulness of such knowledge in the future, by asserting that by it alone could a living and a reputation be obtained, and even by direct immediate punishment and reward. Thus from the very outset, knowledge was set up as a servant of material welfare ; and this education, which was described above, from the point of view of its content, as simply incapable of developing a moral sense, was in fact obliged, in order to reach the pupil at all, to implant and develop moral corruption in him and to unite its own interest with that of this corruption. Further, it will be found that the natural talent, which, as an exception to the rule, learned willingly and therefore well in schools under the old education, overcame the moral corruption of the environment and kept its character pure, thanks to this greater love that governed it. Owing to its natural inclination it acquired a practical interest in 30 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION these subjects, and, guided by its happy instinct, it aimed at producing, far more than at merely receiving, such knowledge. Then, in regard to the subjects taught, this education usually succeeded best, in exception to the rule, with those which it allowed to be practised actively. For instance, the classical language 1 in which writing and speaking were the aim was nearly always fairly well learned ; whereas the other language, 2 in which practice in writing and speaking was neglected, was usually learned very badly and superficially, and was forgotten in later years. It follows, therefore, from previous experience, that it is the development of mental activity by means of instruc tion which alone produces pleasure in knowledge simply as such, and so keeps the mind open for moral training ; on the other hand, purely passive receptivity paralyses and kills knowledge, just as it inevitably corrupts the moral sense completely. 22. To return again to the pupil under the new education. It is evident that, spurred on by his love, he will learn much and, since he understands everything in its relations and immediately puts into action what he has understood, he will learn it correctly and will never forget it. Yet that is but incidental. More important is the fact that this love exalts his personality and intro duces him systematically and deliberately into a wholly new order of things, into which hitherto only a few, favoured by God, came by accident. The love which spurs him on aims not at sensuous enjoyment, which quite ceases to be a motive for him, but at mental activity and the law of that activity for their own sakes. Now, it is not this mental activity in general with which morality is concerned ; for this purpose a special direction must be given to that activity. Yet this love is the specific 1 [Latin]. 2 [Greek]. GENERAL NATURE OF NEW EDUCATION 31 quality and form of tbe moral will. This method of mental training is, therefore, the immediate preparation for the moral ; it completely destroys the root of immor ality by never allowing sensuous enjoyment to become the motive. Formerly, that was the first motive to be stimulated and developed, because it was believed that otherwise the pupil could not be influenced or controlled at all. If the moral motive had to be developed after wards, it came too late and found the heart already occupied by, and filled with, another love. On the other\ hand, in the new education the training of a pure will is to be the first aim, so that if, later, selfishness should awake within, or be stimulated from without, it may come too late, and find no room for itself in a heart which is already occupied by something else. / 23. It is essential both for this first aim and also fort the second, which will be mentioned soon, that from the^\ very beginning the pupil should be continuously and ^ completely under the influence of this education, and J .shoulcLbe separated altogether from the community, and J kept from all contact with it. He must not even hear * that our vital impulses and actions can be directed towards our maintenance and welfare, nor that we may learn for that reason, nor that learning may be of some use for that purpose. It follows that mental development should be produced in him only in the manner described above, that he should be occupied with it unceasingly, and that this method of instruction should on no account be exchanged for that which requires the opposite material motive. 24. But, although this mental development does not let self-seeking come to life and provides indeed the form oLa moj^Ljvill, it is not yet, however; the moral will itself. If the new education which we propose did not go further, it would at best train excellent men of learn- 32 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION ing, as in the past, of whom only a few are needed, and who would be able to do no more for our true human and national aim than such men have done hitherto exhort, and exhort again, get themselves wondered at, and occasionally abused. But it is clear, as I have already said, that this free activity of the mind is developed with [ the intention that by it the pupil may voluntarily create j the image of a moral order of life that actually exists, j may lay hold of this image with the love that is also I already developed in him, and be spurred on by this love I to realize it actually in and by his life. The question is, how can the new education prove to itself that it has achieved this, its true and final purpose with the pupil. 25. Above all it is clear that the mental activity of the pupil, which has been exercised already on other objects, should be stimulated to create an image of the I social order of mankind as it ought to be, simply in accord- / ance with the law of reason. Whether the image created by the pupil be true can be judged most easily by an education which alone is in possession of this true image. Whether it is created by the pupil s spontaneous activity, and not simply passively accepted and credulously repeated in school fashion, and, further, whether it is raised to the proper clearness and vividness, education will be able to judge, just as it has hitherto correctly judged other things in this respect. Yet all this is a matter for mere knowledge, and remains within the domain of knowledge, which is very accessible in this system of education. It is a very different and a higher question, whether the pupil is so filled with ardent love for such an order of things, that it will be utterly impossible for him not to desire it and to work with all his strength to promote it, when freed from the guidance of education and left inde pendent. This question, undoubtedly, not words and GENERAL NATURE OF NEW EDUCATION 33 tests which are arranged in words, but only the appear ance of deeds, can decide. 26. This is my solution of the problem raised by this last consideration. Under the new system of education the pupils, although separated from the adult community, will, nevertheless, undoubtedly live together among them selves, and so form a separate and self-contained com munity with its organization precisely defined, based on the nature of things and demanded throughout by reason. The very first image of a social order which the pupil s mind should be stimulated to create will be that of the community in which he himself lives. He will be inwardly compelled, therefore, to fashion this order for himself bit for bit, just as it is actually sketched out for him, and to conceive it in all its parts as absolutely inevitable because of its elements. This, again, is merely the work of knowledge. Now, in real life under this social arrange- , ment every individual has continually to abstain, for the sake of the community, from much that he could do without hesitation if he were alone. It will be fitting, therefore, that the legislation, and the instruction con cerning the constitution which is to be based thereon, should represent to each individual all the others asj animated by a love of order exalted to the ideal, which! perhaps no one person really has, but which all ought/ \ to have. It will be fitting, too, that the legislation should 1 / consequently maintain a high standard of severity, and should prohibit the doing of many things. Such , which simply must exist and on which the existence of the cornmunity depends, are to be enforced in case of necessity by fear of immediate punishment, and this penal law must be administered absolutely without indulgence or exception. This application of does not impair in any way the morality 3 34 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION of the pupil, for in this case he is incited, not to do good, but only to abstain from what under this system of govern ment is evil. Moreover, the instruction concerning the constitution must make it quite clear that anyone who still needs the idea of punishment, or even indeed to revive that idea by suffering punishment, is at a very low stage of civilization. Yet, in spite of all this, it is clear that in these circumstances the pupil will be unable to show his good will outwardly, and education will be unable to estimate it, since no one can ever know whether obedience results from love of order or from fear of punishment. On the other hand, in the following circumstances such an estimate is possible. The system of government must be arranged in such a way that the individual must not only abstain, but will also work and act, for the sake of the community. Physical exercises, the mechanical, but here idealized, work of farming, and trades of various kinds, in addition to the development of the mind by learning, are included in this commonwealth of pupils. A fundamental principle of the system of government will be that anyone who may excel in one of these depart ments will be expected to help to instruct the others in it, and to undertake superintendence and responsibilities of various kinds. Anyone who discovers an improvement, or understands most clearly, and before the others, an im provement proposed by a teacher, is expected to work it out by his own efforts, without being set free for this purpose from his other personal tasks of learning and work ing which are understood. Everyone is supposed to fulfil this expectation voluntarily, not compulsorily ; for anyone who is unwilling is free to refuse. He is to expect neither reward for it, for under this system of government all are quite equal in regard to work and pleasure, nor even praise, GENERAL NATURE OF NEW EDUCATION tity is that ne enjoys / mmunity, J for the attitude of mind prevailing in the community it is just everyone s duty to act thus ; but he alone the pleasure of acting and working for the community, and of succeeding, if that should fall to his lot. Under this system of government, therefore, the acquirement of greater skill and the effort spent therein will result only in fresh effort and work, and it will be the very pupil who is abler than the rest who must often watch while others sleep, and reflect while others play. 27. To some pupils all this will be quite clear and intelligible. Yet they will continue to undertake that initial toil and the further labours that result from it so joyfully that they may be relied on with certainty. They will remain strong, and become even stronger, in their feeling of power and activity. Such pupils education can confidently send out into the world ; it has achieved its purpose with them. Their love has been kindled and burns down to the root of their vital impulse ; from now onwards it will lay hold of everything, without excep tion, that comes in contact with this vital impulse. In the larger community, which they now enter, they can never be anything but the steady and constant beings they have been in the little community they are now j leaving. The pupil has in this way been fully prepared for the demands which the world will immediately and certainly make of him. What education, in the name of this world, demands of him has been done. But he is still not perfect in and for himself, and what he himself can claim from education has not yet been done. When this demand, too, has been met, he will be able to satisfy also the demands which, in special circumstances, a higher world, in the name of the present world, may make of him. THIRD ADDRESS DESCRIPTION OF THE NEW EDUCATION (continued) 28. THE essential feature of the proposed new education, so far as it was described in the last address, consisted in this, that it is the sure and deliberate art of training the pupil to pure morality. To pure morality, I said ; the morality to which it educates exists as an original, independent, and separate thing, which develops spon taneously its own life, but is not, like the legality hitherto often aimed at, linked with and implanted in some other non-moral impulse, for the satisfaction of which it serves. It is the sure and deliberate art of this moral education, I said. It does not proceed aimlessly and at random, but according to a fixed rule well known to it, and is certain of its success. Its pupil goes forth at the proper time as a fixed and unchangeable machine produced by this art, which indeed could not go otherwise than as it has been regulated by the art, and needs no help at all, but continues of itself according to its own law. This education certainly does train also the pupil s mind, and this mental training is indeed the first thing with which it commences its task. Yet this mental development is not the chief and original aim, but only the condition and means of applying moral training to the pupil. This mental training, however, though acquired but incidentally, remains an ineradicable pos- 36 DESCRIPTION OF THE NEW EDUCATION 37 session of the pupil s life and the ever-burning lamp of his moral love. However great or small the total know ledge which he may have obtained from education, he will certainly have brought away from it a mind which, during the whole of his life, will be able to grasp every truth, the knowledge of which is essential to him, and which will remain continually susceptible to instruction from others, as well as capable of reflecting for itself. This was the point we reached in the last address in the description of the new education. At the end of it we remarked that thereby it was not yet completed, but that it had still to solve another problem different from those already set. We proceed now to the task of defining this problem more clearly. 29. The pupil of this education is not merely a member of human society here on this earth and for the short span of life which is permitted him on it. He is also, and is undoubtedly acknowledged by education to be, a link in the eternal chain of spiritual life in a higher social order. A training which has undertaken to include the whole of his being should undoubtedly lead him to a knowledge of this higher order also. Just as it led him to sketch out for himself by his own activity an image of that moral world-order which never is, but always is to be, so must it lead him to create in thought by the same self-activity an image of that supersensuous world-order in which nothing becomes, and which never has become, but which simply is for ever ; all this in such a way that he intimately understands and perceives that it could not be otherwise. Under proper guidance he will complete his attempts at such an image, and find at the end that nothing really exists but life, the spiritual life which lives in thought, and that everything else does not really exist, but only appears to exist. The 38 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION reason for this appearance, a reason that results from thought, he will likewise grasp, even if only in general. Further, he will perceive that, amid the various forms which it received, not by chance, but according to a law founded in God Himself, the spiritual life which alone really exists is one, the divine life itself, which exists and manifests itself only in living thought. He will thus f learn to know and keep holy his own and every other spiritual life as an eternal link in the chain of the mani- V festation of the divine life. Only in immediate contact with God and in the direct emanation of his life from Him will he find life, light, and happiness, but in any separation from that immediate contact, death, darkness, and misery. In a word, this development will train him I to religion ; and this religion of the indwelling of our life in God shall indeed prevail and be carefully fostered in the new era. On the other hand, the religion of the past separated the spiritual life from the divine, and only by apostasy against the divine life could it procure for the spiritual life the absolute existence which it had ascribed to it. It used God as a means to introduce self-seeking into other worlds after the death of the mortal body, and through fear and hope of these other worlds to rein force for the present world the self-seeking which would otherwise have remained weak. Such a religion, which was obviously a servant of selfishness, shall indeed be borne to the grave along with the past age. In the new era eternity does not dawn first on yon side of the grave, but comes into the midst of the present life ; while self- seeking is dismissed from serving and from ruling, and (departs, taking its servants with it. Education to true religion is, therefore, the final task of the new education. Whether in the creation of the necessary image of the DESCRIPTION OF THE NEW EDUCATION 39 supersensuous world-order the pupil has really acted spontaneously, and whether the image created is abso lutely correct and thoroughly clear and intelligible, educa tion can easily judge in the same way as in the case of other objects of knowledge, for that, too, is in the domain of knowledge. 30. But here, too, the more important question is : How can education estimate and guarantee that this knowledge of religion will not remain dead and cold, but will be expressed in the actual life of the pupil ? The premise of this question is the answer to another : How, and in what manner, is religion shown in life ? In everyday life, and in a well-ordered community, there is no need whatever of religion to regulate HfeJ True morality suffices wholly for that purpose. In this respect, therefore, religion is not practical, and cannot and shall not become practical. Religion is simply^ knowledge ; it makes man quite clear and intelligible to himself, answers the highest question which he can raise, solves for him the last contradiction, and so brings into his understanding complete unity with itself and perfect clearness. It is his complete salvation and deliver ance from every foreign bond. Education, therefore, owes him this religion as his due absolutely, and without ulterior purpose. Religion, as a motive, has its only sphere of action in a very immoral and corrupt society, or where man s field of activity lies not within the social order but beyond it, and rather has continually to create it anew and to maintain it ; as in the case of the ruler, who often could not, without religion, perform the duties of his office with a good conscience. Such a case is not the concern of an education intended for everyone and for the whole nation. When, as in the former case, work is continued unceasingly, although man s understanding 40 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION has a clear perception of the incorrigibility of the age ; when the toil of sowing is courageously borne without any prospect of harvest ; when good is done even to the ungrateful, and those who curse are blessed with deeds and gifts, although it is clearly foreseen that they will curse again ; when after a hundred failures man persists in faith and in love ; then, it is not mere morality which is the motive, for that requires a purpose, but it is religion, the submission to a higher and unknown law, the humble silence before God, the sincere love of His life that is manifested in us, which alone and for its own sake shall be saved, where the eye sees nothing else to save. 31. Hence, the knowledge of religion, obtained by the pupils of the new education in their little community in which they grow up, cannot and shall not become practical. This community is well ordered, and in it whatever is properly attempted always succeeds ; besides, the yet tender age of man shall be maintained in simplicity and in quiet faith in his race. Let the knowledge of its knavery remain reserved for personal experience in mature and stronger years. It is, therefore, only in these more mature years and in the life of earnest purpose, long after education has left him to himself, that the pupil, if his social relations should advance from simple to higher stages, could need his knowledge of religion as a motive. Now, how shall education, which cannot test the pupil in this while he is in its hands, nevertheless be sure that this motive will work infallibly, if only the need arise ? I reply : In this way ; the pupil is so trained that none of the knowledge he possesses remains dead and cold within him when the possibility of its coming to life arises, but it all inevit ably influences life so soon as life requires it. I shall give further reasons for this statement in a moment, and DESCRIPTION OF THE NEW EDUCATION 41 so elevate the whole conception which has been treated in this and in the last address, and fit it into a larger system of knowledge. On this larger system itself I shall shed new light and greater clearness by that con ception. But first let me describe exactly the true nature of the new education, a general description of which I have just ended. I 32. This education, then, no longer appears, as it did at the beginning of our address to-day, simply as the art , of training the pupil to pure morality, but is rather the art of training the whole man completely and fully for manhood. In this connection there are two essentials. First, in regard to form, it is the real living human being, \ not simply the shadow and phantom of a man, who is to be trained to the very roots of his life. Then, in regard to content, all the essential component parts of man are to be developed equally and without exception. These component parts are understanding and will ; and education has to aim at clearness in the former and at purity in the latter. Now, in regard to clearness in the former, two main questions must be raised ; first, what it is that the pure will really wishes, and by what means this wish is to be attained ; under this head is included all other knowledge which is to be taught to the pupil ; secondly, what this pure will is in principle and essence ; under this head is included knowledge of religion. The essentials mentioned, and their development until they influence life, education demands absolutely, and does not intend to exempt anyone from them in the slightest degree, for everyone must be a complete man. As to what anyone may become in addition, and as to the par ticular form general human nature may take or receive in him, this does not concern universal education, and lies beyond its scope. 42 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION 33. I proceed now, by means of the following proposi tions, to give the further reasons I promised for the statement that in the pupil of the new education no knowledge can remain dead, and to fulfil my intention of elevating into a connected system all that has been said. From what has been said it follows that from the point of view of their education there are two quite different .and entirely opposite classes of men. At first every human being (and, therefore, also these two classes) is alike in this, that underlying the various manifestations of his life there is one impulse, which amid all change persists unchanged and is always the same. Incidentally, the self-comprehension of this impulse and its translation into ideas creates the world, and there is no other world but this world which is created thus in thought, not freely but of necessity. Now this impulse, which must always be translated into consciousness (and in this respect, once again, the two classes are alike), can be so translated in two ways, according to the two different kinds of consciousness. It is in the method of translation and of self-comprehension that the two classes differ. The first kind of consciousness, that which is the first in point of time to develop, is that of dim feeling. Where this feeling exists, the fundamental impulse is most usually and regularly comprehended as the individual s love of self ; indeed, dim feeling shows this self at first only as something that wills to live and to prosper. Hence, material self-seeking arises as the real motive and developing power of such a life engrossed in translating its original impulse thus. So long as man continues to understand himself in this way, so long must he act selfishly, being unable to do otherwise ; and, amid the ceaseless change in his life, it is this self-seeking alone that persists, always the same and to be expected with certainty. Thr DESCRIPTION OF THE NEW EDUCATION 43 dim feeling can also, as an unusual exception to the rule, pass beyond the personal self, and comprehend the fundamental impulse as a desire for a dimly-felt different order of things. Thence arises the life, adequately described by us elsewhere, which, exalted above self- seeking, is motived by ideas, dim indeed but none the less ideas, and in which reason rules as an instinct. Such comprehension of the fundamental impulse merely by dim feeling is the characteristic of the first class of men, who are trained, not by education, but by their own selves ; this class in turn consists of two species, which are distinct for some reason that is incomprehensible and quite beyond the art of man to discover. Clear knowledge is the second kind of consciousness which does not, as a rule, develop of itself, but must bq carefully fostered in the community. If the fundamental impulse of man were embraced in this principle, it would produce a second class of men quite different from the first. Such knowledge, which embraces fundamental love itself, does not leave us cold and indifferent, as indeed other knowledge can, but its object is loved above every thing, for that object is but the interpretation and translation of our original love itself. Other knowledge embraces something alien, which remains alien and leaves us cold ; this knowledge embraces the knower himself and his love, and he loves it. Now, although it is the same original love appearing only in different forms which spurs on both classes, yet disregarding this circumstance we can say that man is governed in the one case by dim feelings, in the other by clear knowledge. Now, that such clear knowledge shall be a direct incentive in life, and shall be capable of being relied on with certainty depends, as has been said, on this, that the real true love of man is to be interpreted by it, that 44 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION this is to be immediately clear to him, and that along with the interpretation the feeling of that love is to be / stimulated in him and experienced by him. Knowledge, / therefore, is never to be developed in him without love / being developed at the same time, because otherwise he / would remain cold ; nor is love ever to be developed with out knowledge being developed at the same time, because \ otherwise his motive would be a dim feeling. At every step \ in the training, then, it is the whole man as a unit that is \ fashioned. The man who is always treated by education 1 as an indivisible whole will remain so in the future, and all \ knowledge will inevitably become for him a motive in life. 34. Clear knowledge instead of dim feeling being j thus made the first and true foundation and starting- \ point of life, ^sel^seeking is_ avoided altogether and cheated of its development. For it is dim feeling alone that represents to man his ego as in need of pleasure and afraid of pain. The clear idea does not represent it thus to him, but shows it rather as a member of a moral order ; and there is a love for that order which is kindled and developed along with the development of the idea. This education has nothing at all to do with self-seeking, the root of which, dim feeling, it kills through clearness. It neither attacks it nor develops it ; it has nothing at all to do with it. Even if, later, it were possible for this self-seeking to stir, it would find the heart already filled with a higher love which would deny it a place. 35. Now this fundamental impulse of man, when translated into clear knowledge, does not concern itself with a world which is already given and existent, which can be accepted, indeed, merely passively just as it is, and in which a love that stimulates to original creative activity would find no sphere of action for itself. On the contrary, exalted to knowledge, it is concerned with a world that DESCRIPTION OF THE NEW EDUCATION 45 is_to be, an a priori world that exists in the future and ever remains in the future. The divine life, therefore, that underlies all appearance reveals itself never as a fixed and known entity, but as something that is to be ; and after it has become what it was to be, it will reveal itself again to all eternity as something that is to be. This divine life, then, never appears in the death of the fixed entity, but remains continually in the form of ever- flowing life. The direct appearance and manifestation of God is love. The interpretation of this love by knowledge first fixes an existence, an existence that ever is to be ; this is the only real world, in so far as a world can be real. The other world, on the contrary, which is given and found existing by us, is but the shadow and phantom, out of which knowledge builds up for its inter pretation of love a fixed form and a visible body. This^ other world is the means for, and the condition of, the perception of the higher world that is in itself invisible. Not even in that higher world does God reveal Himself directly, but there too only through the medium of the one, pure, unchangeable, and formless love ; it is in this love alone that He appears directly. To this love there is jpined^ntuitiyeknowledge, which brings^mth it ~an image drawn from itself, with which to clothe theobj ect of love that is, in itself invisible. Yet each time it is opposed by love, and thereby stimulated again to make a new form, which is once again opposed in just the same way. Only thus, by fusion with intuition, does love too, which purely in itself is one and quite incapable of pro gress, of infinity, and of eternity, become like it eternal ! and infinite. The image mentioned just now, which is ; supplied from knowledge itself, considered by itself alone 1 and without application to the love that is clearly per- ceived, is the fixed and given world, or nature. The 46 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION delusion that God s presence reveals itself in this nature in any way directly, or otherwise than through the agencies above mentioned, arises from darkness of mind and profanity of will. 36. The complete avoidance of dim feeling as a solvent of love and the setting up in its stead of clear knowledge as the usual solvent, as has already been men tioned, can happen only as the result of a deliberate art of education, and hitherto has not happened in this way. By this means too, as we have also seen, a type of man quite different from men as they have usually been hitherto will be introduced and become the rule. As the result of this education, therefore, a totally new order of things and a new creation would begin. Now, in this new form, mankind would fashion itself by means of itself, for mankind considered as the present generation educates itself as the future generation ; and mankind can do this only by means of knowledge, the one common true light and air of this world which can be freely imparted and which binds the spiritual world into a unity. Formerly mankind became just what it did become and was able to become ; the time for such chance development has gone by ; for where mankind has developed most it has become nothing. If it is not to remain in this nothingness, it must henceforward make itself all that it is yet to become. The real destiny of the human race on earth, I said in ; the lectures of which these are the continuation, is in freedom to make itself what it really is originally. Now, this making of itself deliberately, and according to rule, must have a beginning somewhere and at some moment in space and time. Thereby a second great period, one of free and deliberate development of the human race, would appear in place of the first period, one of develop- I ment that is not free. We are of opinion that, in regard DESCRIPTION OF THE NEW EDUCATION 47 to time, this is the very time, and that now the race is exactly midway between the two great epochs of its life on earth. But, in regard to space, we believe that it is first of all the Germans who are called upon to begin the new era as pioneers and models for the rest of mankind. - 37. Yet even this wholly new creation will not result | as a sudden change from what has gone before ; it is rather, especially with the Germans, the true natural continuation and consequence of the past. It is apparent and, I believe, generally granted that the impulse and effort of the age has been seeking to dispel dim feelings and to secure the sole mastery for clearness and knowledge. , This effort has been quite successful at least in this, that it has completely revealed the nothingness of the past. The impulse towards clearness should not be rooted out, nor should dull acquiescence in dim feeling again obtain the mastery. Rather must this impulse be developed still further and introduced into higher spheres, so that when the Nothing has been revealed, the Some thing, the positive truth that sets up something real, may likewise become manifest. The world of given and self-forming existence, which arises from dim feeling, has been submerged and shall remain below the surface. The world, however, which arises from original clearness, the world of existence that is ever to be evolved from the mind, shall dawn and shine forth in its splendour. 38. Truly the prophecy of a new life in such forms will probably seem strange to our age, which would scarcely have the courage to take this promise to itself, if it were to look solely at the tremendous difference between its own prevailing opinions on these matters and those which have been expressed as principles of the new era. I will not speak of the education which in the past, as a rule, only the higher classes received, as a 48 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION privilege not to be extended to everyone, and which was quite silent concerning any supersensuous world, and strove merely to produce some skill in the affairs of the sensuous world. It was obviously the worse kind of education. But I will look only at what was popular education and could also, in a certain very limited sense, be called national education, which did not preserve com plete silence concerning a supersensuous world. What were the doctrines of this education ? We put forward as the fundamental assumption of the new education that there is at the root of man s nature a pure pleasure in the good, which can be developed to such an extent that it becomes impossible for him to leave undone what he knows to be good and to do instead what he knows to be evil. The existing education, on the other hand, has not only assumed, but has also taught its pupils from early youth onwards, that man has a natural aversion from God s commandments, and, further, that it is absolutely impossible for him to keep them. What else can be ex pected of such instruction, if it is taken seriously and believed, than that each individual should yield to his absolutely unchangeable nature, should not try to achieve what has once been represented to him as impossible, and should not desire to be better than he and all others can be ? Indeed, he accepts the baseness attri buted to him, the baseness of acknowledging his natural sinfulness and wickedness, because such baseness in God s sight is represented to him as the sole means of coming to terms with Him. If perchance such a statement as ours comes to his ears, he cannot but think that someone merely wants to play a bad joke on him, because he has an ever- present inward feeling, which to him is perfectly clear, that this statement is not true, and that the opposite alone is true. We presuppose a knowledge, not dependent DESCRIPTION OF THE NEW EDUCATION 49 on any given existence, but on the contrary itself giving laws for that existence, and propose to immerse every child of man in this knowledge from the very beginning, and to keep him from that time onwards continually under its rule. On the other hand, we regard that nature of things which can be learned only from history as an insignificant accessory that follows of itself. When we do all this, then the ripest products of the old educa tion oppose us, reminding us that it is well known there is no a priori knowledge, and saying they would like to know how there can be any knowledge except through experience. In order that this supersenuous and a priori world should not reveal itself in the place where this seemed unavoidable, namely, in the possibility of a knowledge of God, and that even in God Himself there should be no spiritual spontaneity, but that passive sub mission should remain all in all to meet this danger the old education has hit upon the daring expedient of making the existence of .God an historical fact, the truth of which is established by the examination of evidence. So in truth the matter stands ; yet our generation should not therefore despair of itself, for these and all other similar phenomena are themselves not independent, but only flowers and fruits of the uncultivated root of the past. If only this generation submits quietly to the 1 grafting of a new, nobler, and stronger root, the old will be killed, and its flower and fruits, deprived of further nourishment, will of themselves wither and fall. As yet this generation cannot believe our words ; it is inevitable that they seem to it like fairy tales. Nor do we want such belief ; we want only room to work and to act. After wards it will see, and it will believe its own eyes. 39. Everyone who is acquainted with the productions of recent years will have noticed long ago that here again 4 50 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION those principles and views are expressed which modern German philosophy since its origin has preached again and again, because it could do nothing else but preach. It is now sufficiently clear that these sermons have vanished without result into thin air, and the reason for this is evident too. A living thing affects only something living ; but in the actual life of the age there is no rela tionship at all with this philosophy, which goes its own way in a sphere that is not yet revealed to this age, and which calls for sense-organs that it has not yet developed. (This philosophy is not at home in our age, but is an I anticipation of time, and a principle of life ready in advance for a generation which shall first awake to light in it. It must give up all claim on the present genera tion ; but, in order not to be idle until then, let it now undertake the task of fashioning for itself the generation to which it does belong. As soon as this, its immediate business, has become clear to it, it will be able to live in peace and friendship with a generation which in other respects does not please it. The education which we have hitherto described is likewise the education for this philosophy. Yet in a certain sense it alone can be the educator in this education ; and so it had to be a fore runner neither understood nor acceptable. But the time will come when it will be understood and received with joy ; and that is why our generation should not despair of itself. 40. Let this generation hearken to the vision of an ancient prophet in a situation no less lamentable. Thus says the prophet l by the river of Chebar, the comforter of those in captivity, not in their own, but in a foreign land. " The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the 1 [Ezekiel xxxvii. i-io. I have used the Authorised Version here.] DESCRIPTION OF THE NEW EDUCATION 51 midst of the valley which was full of bones, and caused me to pass by them round about : and, behold, there were very many in the open valley ; and, lo, they were very dry. And He said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live ? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest. Again He said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones, Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live : and I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live ; and ye shall know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded : and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone. And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above ; but there was no breath in them. Then said He unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God, Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army." Though the elements of our higher spiritual life may be just as dried up, and though the bonds of our national unity may lie just as torn asunder and as scattered in wild disorder as the bones of the slain in the prophecy, though they may have whitened and dried for centuries in tempests, rainstorms, and burning sunshine, the quickening breath of the spiritual world has not yet ceased to blow. It will take hold, too, of the dead bones of our national body, and join them together, that they / may stand glorious in new and radiant life. FOURTH ADDRESS THE CHIEF DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE GERMANS AND THE OTHER PEOPLES OF TEUTONIC DESCENT (41. WE have said that the means of educating a new race of men, which is being put forward in these addresses, must first be_ applied by Germans to Germans, and that it concerns our nation in a special and peculiar way. This statement also requires proof ; and here, as before, we shall begin with what is highest and most general, showing what is the characteristic of the German as such, apart from the fate that has now befallen him ; showing, too, that this has been his characteristic ever since^ he began to exist ; ancTpointing out how this fi characteristic in itself gives him alone, above all other f European nations, the capacity of responding to such an I education. 42. In the first place, the German is a branch of the Teutonic race. Of the latter it is sufficient to say here that its mission wasjto_cgmbinejthe socialorder_established in ancient Europe with the true jejigion preserved in ancient jVsia, and in this way to develop in and by itself a new and different age after the ancient world had perished. Further, it is sufficient to distinguish the German particularly, in contrast only to the other Teutonic peoples who came into existence with him. Other neo-European nations, as, for instance, those of Slav descent, do not seem as yet to have developed distinctly enough in comparison 52 GERMANS & OTHER TEUTONS COMPARED 53 with the rest of Europe to make it possible to give a definite description of them ; whereas others of the same Teutonic descent, as, for instance, the Scandinavians, although the main reason for differentiation (which will be stated immediately) does not apply to them, are yet ~ regarded here as indisputably Germans, and included in all the general consequences of our observations. 43. But at the very outset the special observations which we are now on the point of making must be pre faced by the following remark. As the cause of the differentiation that has taken place in what was originally one stock I shall cite an event which, considered merely as an event, lies clear and incontestable before the eyes of all. I shall then adduce some manifestations of the differentiation that has taken place ; and these manifesta tions, considered merely as events, could perhaps be made just as clear and obvious. But with regard to the connection of the latter, as consequences, with the former, as their cause, and with regard to the deduction of the consequences from the cause, I cannot, speaking generally, reckon upon being equally clear and con vincing to everyone. It is true that in this matter also I am not making entirely new statements which no one has heard of before ; on the contrary, there are among us many individuals who are either well prepared for such a view of the matter, or perhaps already familiar with it. Among the majority, however, there are in circulation ideas about the subject of our discussion which differ greatly from our own. To correct such ideas, and to refute all the objections to single points that might be raised by those who are not practised in taking a comprehensive view of a subject, would far exceed the limits of our time and our intention. I must content myself with placing before such people, merely 54 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION as a subject for their further consideration, what I have to say in this connection, remarking that in my system of thought it does not stand so separate and detached as it appears in this place, nor is it without a foundation in the depths of knowledge. I could not omit it entirely, partly on account of the thoroughness of treatment demanded by my whole subject, and partly because of its important consequences, which will appear later in the course of our addresses, and which are intimately connected with our present design. 44. The first and immediately obvious difference between the fortunes of t^e Germans and the other branches which grew from the same root is this : the former remained in the original^ dwelling-places of the ancestraLstpck, whereas the latter emigrated to other places ; the former retained and developed the original language. of the ancestral stock, whereas the latter adopted a foreign language and gradually reshaped it in a way of their own. This earliest difference must be regarded as the explanation of those which came later, e.g., that in /fKe originaTtattefferTd^in accordance with Teutonic primitive custom, there continuecTtirfaea, federation of LStateTunS^fTTieaa^vSh limite3Tpowefs7wEereaT in the foreign countries the form of government was brought more in accordance with the existing Roman method, and monarchies were established, etc. It is not these later differences that explain the one first mentioned. 45. Now, of the changes which have been indicated, the first, the change of home, is quite unimportant. Man easily makes himself at home under any sky, and the changed by the place of abode, dominates and changes the latter after its own pattern. Moreover, the variety of natural influences in the region inhabitated by the Teutons is GERMANS & OTHER TEUTONS COMPARED 55 not very great. Just as little importance should be attached to the fact that the Teutonic race has inter mingled with the former inhabitants of the countries it conquered ; for, after all, the victors and masters and makers of the new people that arose from this inter mingling were none but Teutons. Moreover, in the mother-country there was an intermingling with Slavs similar to that which took place abroad with Gauls, Cantabrians, etc., and perhaps of no less extent ; so that it would not be easy at the present day for any one of the peoples descended from Teutons to demonstrate a greater purity of descent than the others. 46. More important, however, and in my opinion the cause of a complete contrast between the Germans and the other peoples of Teutonic descent, is the second change, the change ~o,f language. Here, as I wish to point out distinctly at the very beginning, fit is not a question of the special quality of the language retained by the one branch or adopted by the other ; on the contrary, the importance lies solely in the fact that in the one case something native is_retained, while in the~ other case something ^foreign is adopted. Nor is it a question of the previous ancestry of those who continue to speak an original language ; on the contrary, the importance lies solely in the fact that this language continues to be spoken, for ,rjiejfl are formed b^Janguage far more than""] language is formed by men. 47. In order to make clear, so far as explanation is possible and necessary in this place, the consequences of such a difference in the creation of peoples, and to make clear the particular kind of contrast in national character istics that necessarily follows from this difference, I must invite you to a consideration of the nature of language in general. 56 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION Language in general, and especially the designation of objects in language by sounds from the organs of speech, is in no way dependent on arbitrary decisions and agreements. On the contrary there is, to begin with, a fundamental law, in accordance with which every idea becomes in the human organs of speech one particular sound and no other. Just as objects are represented in the sense-organs of an individual by a definite form, colour, etc., so they are represented in language, which is the organ of social man, by a definite sound. It is not really man that speaks, but human nature speaks in him and announces itself to others of his kind. Hence one should say : There is and can be but one single language. Now indeed, and this is the second point, language in this unity for man, simply as man, may never and no where have arisen. Everywhere it may have been further changed and formed by two groups of influences ; firstly, those exerted on the organs of speech by the locality and by more or less frequent use, and, secondly, those exerted on the order of the designations by the order in which..obj.ecs_^vere observed and, designated. Never theless, in this also there is no chance or arbitrariness, but strict law ; and in an organ of speech thus affected by the conditions mentioned there necessarily arises, not the one pure human language, but a deviation therefrom, and, moreover, this particular deviation and no other. If we give the name of people to men whose_organs of speech -are influenced by the same external conditions, who live together, and who develop their language in continuous communication with each other, then we must say : The language of this people is necessarily just what it is, and in reality this people does not express its knowledge, but its knowledge expresses itself out of the mouth of the people. GERMANS & OTHER TEUTONS COMPARED 57 48. Despite all the changes brought about, as the language progresses, by the circumstances mentioned above, this conformity with law remains uninterrupted ; and indeed, for all who remain in uninterrupted com munication, and who all hear in due course whatever any individual for the first time expresses, there is one and the same conformity with law. After thousands of years, and after all the changes undergone in that time by the external manifestation of the language of this people, it ever remains nature s one, same, living power of speech, which in the beginning necessarily arose in the way it did, which has flowed down through all conditions without interruption, and in each necessarily became what it did become, which in the end necessarily was what it now is, and in time to come necessarily will be what it then will be. The pure human language, in conjunction^ first with the speech-organ of the people when its first sound was uttered, and the product of these, in conjunc tion further with all the developments which this first sound in the given circumstances necessarily acquired- all this together gives as its final result the present language of the people. For that reason, too, the language always remains the same language. Even though, after some centuries have passed7The descendants do not understand the language of their ancestors, because for them the transitions have been lost, nevertheless there is from the beginning a continuous transition without a leap, a transition^ always imperceptible at the time, and only made perceptible when further transitions occur and the whole process appears as a leap forward. There has never been a time when contemporaries ceased to understand each other, for their eternal go-between and interpreter always was, and has continued to be, the common power of nature speaking through them all. Such is the con- 58 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION dition of language, considered as the designation of objects directly perceived by the senses ; and in the beginning all human language is this. When the people raises itself from this stage of sensuous perception to a grasp of the supersensuous, then, if this supersensuous is to be repeated at will and kept from being confused with the sensuous by the first individual, and if it is to be com municated to others for their convenience and guidance, the only way at first to keep firm hold of it will be to designate a Self as the instrument of a supersensuous world and to distinguish it precisely from the same Self as the instrument of the sensuous world to contrast a soul, a mind, etc., with a physical body. As all the various objects of this supersensuous world appear only in and exist for that supersensuous instrument, the only possible way of designating them in language would be to say that their special relation to their instrument is similar to the relation of such-and-such particular sensuous objects to the sensuous instrument, and in this relation to compare a particular supersensuous thing with a particular sensuous one, using this comparison to indicate by language the place of the supersensuous thing in the supersensuous instrument. In this sphere language has no further power ; it gives a sensuous image of the supersensuous thing, merely with the remark that it is an image of that kind ; he who wishes to attain to the thing itself must set his own mental instrument in motion according to the rule given him by the image. Speaking T generally, it is evident that this designation of the super- sensuous by means^of^jensuous images must in every -bertogcTitioned by the stage of development which !the power of sensuo us perception has reached in the p.eople under -consideration. Hence, the origin and pro gress of this designation by sensuous images will be very GERMANS & OTHER TEUTONS COMPARED 59 different in different languages and will depend on the difference in the relation that has existed and continues to exist between the sensuous and intellectual develop ment of the people speaking a language. 49. We shall next illustrate this observation, clear though it is in itself, by an example. Anything that arises, according to the conception of the fundamental impulse explained in the preceding address, directly in clear perception and not in the first place in dim feeling anything of this kind, and it is always a supersensuous object, is denoted by a Greek word which is frequently used in the German language also ; it is called an Idea [German, Idee\ ; and this word conveys exactly the same sensuous image as the word Gesicbt in German, which occurs in the following expressions in Luther s translation of the Bible : Ye shall see visions \Gesicb te\ 9 ye shall dream dreams. Idea or Vision, in its sensuous meaning, would be something that could be perceived only by the bodily eye and not by any other sense such as taste, hearing, etc. ; it would be such a thing as a rainbow, or the forms which pass before us in dreams. Idea or Vision, in its supersensuous meaning, would denote, first of all, in conformity with the sphere in which the word is to be valid, something that cannot be perceived by the body at all, but only by the mind ; and then, something that cannot, as many other things can, be perceived by the dim feeling of the mind, but only by the eye of the mind, by clear perception. Further, even if one were inclined to assume that for the Greeks the basis of this sensuous designation was certainly the rainbow and similar phenomena, one would have to admit that their sensuous perception had already advanced to the stage of noticing this difference between things, viz., that some reveal themselves to all or several senses and others to 60 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION the eye alone, and that, besides, if the developed conception had become clear to them, they would have had to desig nate it not in this way but in some other. Also their superior mental clearness would then be evident as compared, say, with that of another people which was not able to indicate the difference between the sensuous and the supersensuous by an image taken from the deliberate waking state, but had gone to dreams to find an image for another world. It would at the same time be plain that this difference was not based on the greater or smaller strength of the sense for the supersensuous in the two peoples, but solely on the difference between their sensuous clearness at the time when they sought to desig nate supersensuous things. / 50. Thus all designation of the supersensuous is con ditioned by the extent and clearness of sensuous percep tion in him who gives the designation. The image is clear to him and expresses to him in an entirely com prehensible way the relation of the thing conceived to the mental instrument, because this relation is explained to him by another, direct, and living relation to his sensuous instrument. The new designation which thus arises, together with all the new clearness which sensuous perception itself acquires by this extended use of the sign, is now deposited in the language ; and the supersensuous perception possible in the future is now designated in accordance with its relation to the total supersensuous and sensuous perception deposited in the whole language. So it goes on without interruption, and so the immediate clearness and comprehensibility of the images is never broken off, but remains a continuous stream. More over, since language is not an arbitrary means of com munication, but breaks forth out of the life of under standing as an immediate force of nature, a language GERMANS & OTHER TEUTONS COMPARED 61 continuously developed according to this law has also- the power oT immediately affecting and stimulating life. Just as things immediately present influence man, so must the words of such a language influence him who understands them ; for they, too, are things, and not an arbitrary contrivance. Such is the case first in the sensuous world. Nor is it otherwise in the supersensuous ; for, although in the latter the continuous process of observ ing nature is interrupted by free contemplation and reflection, and at this point God who is without image appears, yet designation by language at once inserts the Thing-without-image in the continuous connection of things which have an image. So, in this respect also, the continuous progress of language, which broke forth in the beginning as a force of nature, remains uninter rupted, and into the stream of designation no arbitrari ness enters. For the same reason the supersensuous part of a language thus continuously developed cannot lose its power of stimulating life in him who but sets his mental instrument in motion. The words of such a language in all its parts are life and create life. Now if, in respect of the development of the language for what is supersensuous, we make the assumption that the people i of this language have continued in unbroken communica- 1 tion, and that what oiTte has thought and expressed^ has j before long come to the knowledge of all, then what has / previously been said in general is valid for all who speak / this language. o all who will but think the image deposited in the language is clear ; to all who really think it is alive and stimulates their life. 51. Such is the case, I say, with a language which, from the time the first sound broke forth among the same people, has developed continuously out of the actual common life of this people, and into which no element 62 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION has ever entered that did not express an observation actually experienced by this people, and, moreover, an observation standing in a connection of wide-spread reciprocal influence with all the other observations of the same people. It does not matter if ever so many -.individuals of other race and other language are incorpora- I ted with the people speaking this language"; provided the former are not permitted to bring the sphere of their observations up to the position from which the language is thereafter to develop, they remain dumb in the com munity and without influence on the language, until the time comes when they themselves have entered into the sphere of observation of the original people. Hence I they do not form the language ; it is the language which forms them. - -52. But the exact opposite of all that has so far been ( said takes place~when~!Tpeople gives up its own language ) and adopts a foreign one which is already highly developed as regards the designation of supersensuous things. I do not mean when it yields itself quite freely to the influence of this foreign language and is quite content to remain without a language until it has entered into the circle of observation of this foreign language, but when it forces its own circle of observation on the adopted language, which, when it develops from the position in which they found it, must thenceforward proceed in this circle of observation. In respect of the sensuous part of the language, such an event, indeed, is without con sequences. For among every people the children must in any case learn that part of the language just as if the signs were arbitrary, and thus recapitulate in this matter the whole previous linguistic development of the nation. But in this sphere of the senses every sign can be made quite clear by directly looking at or touching the thing GERMANS & OTHER TEUTONS COMPARED 6y designated. At most, the result of this would be that the first generation of a people which thus changed its language would be compelled when adults to go back to the years of childhood ; with their descendants, however, and with subsequent generations, everything would doubtless be in the old order again. On the other hand, this change has consequences of the greatest impor tance in respect of the supersensuous part of the language. For the first possessors of the language this part was formed in the way already described ; but, for those who acquire the language later, the verbal image contains a comparison with an observation of the senses, which they have either passed over long ago without the accom panying mental development, or else have not yet had, and perhaps never can have. The most that they can do in such a case is to let the verbal image and its^ mental significance explain each other ; in this way they receive the flat and dead history of a foreign culture but not in any way a culture of their own. They ger symbols which for them are neither immediately clear nor able to stimulate life, but which must seem to them entirely as arbitrary as the sensuous part of the language. For them this advent of history, and nothing but history, as expositor, makes the language dead and closed in respect (A of its whole sphere of imagery, and its continuous onward flow is broken off. Although, beyond this sphere, they^ may again develop the language as a living language in their own way and so far as this is possible from such a starting-point, nevertheless that element remains a dividing wall at which, without exception, language in its original emergence from life as a force of nature and the actual language s renewal of contact with life are broken. Although such a language may be stirred on the surface by the wind of life and thus present the appearance of I ^4 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION having a life of its own, nevertheless it has a dead element deeper down, and by the entrance of the new circle of observation and the breach with the old one it is cut off from the living root. 53. We proceed to illustrate the foregoing by an example, remarking incidentally that such a language, at bottom dead and incomprehensible, very easily lends itself to perversion and to misuse in glossing over every kind of human corruption, and that this is not possible in a language which has never died. I take as my example the three notorious words, Humanity, Popularity, and Liberality. When these words are used in speaking to a German who has learnt no language but his own they are to him nothing but a meaningless noise, which has no relationship of sound to remind him of anything he knows already and so takes him completely out of his circle of observation and beyond any observation possible to him. Now, if the unknown word nevertheless attracts his attention by its foreign, distinguished, and euphonious tone, and if he thinks that what sounds so lofty must also have some lofty meaning, he must have this meaning explained to him from the very beginning and as some thing entirely new to him, and he can only accept this explanation, blindly. So he becomes tacitly accus tomed to acknowledge as really existing and valuable something which, if left to himself, he would perhaps never have found worth mentioning. Let no one believe that the case is much different with the neo-Latin peoples, who utter those words as if they were words of their mother-tongue. Without a scholarly study of antiquity and of its actual language they understand the roots of those words just as little as the German does. Now if, instead of the word Humanity [Human- itdi], we had said to a German the word Menschlichkeit, GERMANS & OTHER TEUTONS COMPARED 65 which is its literal translation, he would have understood us without further historical explanation, but he would have said : " Well, to be a man [Mensch~\ and not a wild beast is not very much after all." Now it may be that no Roman would ever have said that ; but the German would say it, because in his language manhood [Mensch- heif\ has remained an idea of the senses only and has never become a symbol of a supersensuous idea as it did among the Romans. Our ancestors had taken note of the separate human virtues and designated them symboli cally in language perhaps long before it occurred to them to combine them in a single concept as contrasted with animal nature ; and that is no discredit to our ancestors as compared with the Romans. Now anyone who, in spite of this, wished to introduce that foreign and Roman symbol artificially and, as it were, by a trick into the language of the Germans, would obviously be lowering their ethical standard in passing on to them as distinguished and commendable something which may perhaps be so in the foreign language, but which the German, in accord ance with the ineradicable nature of his national power of imagination, only regards as something already known and indispensable. A closer examination might enable * us to demonstrate that those Teutonic races which j adopted the Latin language experienced, even in the | beginning, similar degradations of their former ethical I standard because of inappropriate foreign symbols ; \ but on this circumstance we do not now wish to lay too great a stress. Further, if in speaking to the German, instead of the words Popularity \_Popularitat] and Liberality \Liber- alitat], I should use the expressions, " striving for favour with the great mob," and " not having the mind of a slave," which is how they must be literally translated, 5 66 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION he would, to begin with, not even obtain a clear and vivid sense-image such as was certainly obtained by a Roman of old. The latter saw every day with his own eyes the flexible politeness of an ambitious candidate to all and sundry, and outbursts of the slave mind too ; and those words vividly re-presented these things to him. Even from the Roman of a later period these sights were removed by the change in the form of government and the introduction of Christianity ; and, besides, his own language was beginning to a great extent to die away in his own mouth. This was more especially due to Christianity, which was alien to him, and which he i could neither ward off nor thoroughly assimilate. How was impossible for this language, already half dead in its own home, to be transmitted alive to a foreign people ? How could it now be transmitted to us Germans ? More over, with regard to the symbolic mental content of both those expressions, there is in the word Popularity, even at the very beginning, something base, which was perverted in their mouths and became a virtue, owing to the corruption of the nation and of its constitution. The German never falls into this perversion, so long as it is put before him in his own language. But when Liberality is translated by saying that a man has not the soul of a slave, or, to give it a modern rendering, has not a lackey s way of thinking, he once more replies that to say this also means very little. Moreover, into these verbal images, which even in their pure form among the Romans arose at a low stage of ethical culture or designated something positively base, there were stealthily introduced during the development X)f the neo-Latin languages the idea of lack of seriousness / about social relations, the idea of self-abandonment, and L the idea of heartless laxity. In order to bring these GERMANS & OTHER TEUTONS COMPARED 67 things into esteem among us, use was made of the respect we have for antiquity and foreign countries to introduce the same words into the German language. It was done x , so quietly that no one was fully aware of what was actually \" intended. The purpose and the result of all admixture has ever been this : first of all to remove the hearer from the immediate comprehensibility and definiteness which are the inherent qualities of every primitive language ; then, when he has been prepared to accept such words in blind faith, to supply him with the explanation that he needs ; and, finally, in this explanation to mix vice and virtue together in such a way that it is no easy matter to separate them again. Now, if the true meaning of" those three foreignjwords, provided they have a meaning, had been expressed to the German in his own words and within his own circle of verbal images, in this way : Menschenfreundlicbkeii (friendliness to man), Leutselig- keit (condescension or affability), and Edelmut (noble- mindedness), he would have understood us ; but the base associations we have mentioned could never have been slipped into those designations. Within the range of German speech such a wrapping-up in incomprehen sibility and darkness arises either from clumsiness or evil design ; it is to be avoided, and the means always ready to hand is to translate into right and true German. But in the neo-Latin languages this incomprehensibility is of their very nature and origin, and there is no means of avoiding it, for they do not possess any living language |j by which they might examine the dead one ; indeed, || when one looks at the matter closely, they are entirely without a mother-tongue. 54. This single example will serve to demonstrate what could with ease be followed up throughout the whole range of the language and found present everywhere. 68 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION It is intended to explain to you as clearly as is here possible what has so far been said. We are speaking of the supersensuous part of the language, and not immediately or directly of the sensuous part. This super- sensuous part, in a language that has always remained alive, is expressed by symbols of sense, comprehending lat every step in complete unity the sum total of the teensuous and mental life of the nation deposited in the language, for the purpose of designating an idea that like wise is not arbitrary, but necessarily proceeds from the jwhole previous life of the nation. From the idea and its designation a keen eye, looking back, couTcThot fail to reconstruct the whole history of the nation s culture. But in a dead language this supersensuous part, which, while the language was still alive, was what we have described, becomes with the death of the language a tattered collection of arbitrary and totally inexplicable symbols for ideas that are just as arbitrary ; and with both idea and symbol there is nothing else to be done but just to learn them. 55. With this our immediate task is performed, which was to find the characteristic that differentiates the German from the other peoples of Teutonic descent. The difference arose at the moment of the separation of the common stock and consists in this, that the ^German speaks a language which has been alive ever since it first issued from the force of nature, whereas the other Teutonic races speak a language which has movement on the surface only but is dead at the root. To this circumstance alone, to life on the one hand and _death on the other, we assign the difference ; but we ~are not in any way taking up the further question of the intrinsic value of the German language. Between I life and death there is no comparison ; the foimer has GERMANS & OTHER TEUTONS COMPARED 69 infinitely more value than the latter. All direct parisons between German and neo-Latin languages are therefore null and void, and are obliged to discuss things which are not worth discussing. If the intrinsic value of the German language is to be discussed, at the very least a language of equal rank, a language equally primitive, as, for example, Greek, must enter the lists ; but such a comparison is far beyond our present purpose. 56. What an immeasurable influence on the whole _ human development of a people the character of its lan guage may have its language, which accompanies the in dividual into the most secret depths of his mind in thought and will and either hinders him or gives him wings, which] unites within its domain the whole mass of men who speak it into one single and common understanding, which is the true point of meeting and mingling for the world of the senses and the world of spirits, and fuses the ends of both in each other in such a fashion that it is impossible to tell to which of the two it belongs itself how different the results of this influence may prove to be where the relation is as life to death,* all this in general is easily perceived. In the first place, the German has a means of investigating his living language more thoroughly , by comparing it with the closed Latin language, which differs very widely from his own in the development of verbal images ; on the other hand, he has a means of understanding Latin more clearly in the same way. This is not possible to a member of the neo-Latin peoples, who fundamentally remains a captive in the sphere of one and the same language. Then the German, in learn ing the original Latin, at the same time acquires to a certain extent the derived languages also ; and if he should learn the former more thoroughly than a foreigner does, which for the reason given the German will very likely 70 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION be able to do, he at the same time learns to understand this foreigner s own language far more thoroughly and to possess it far more intimately than does the foreigner TTiimself who speaks it. Hence the German, if only he j makes use of all his advantages, can always be^uperior ^ to the foreigner and understand him fully, even better than the foreigner understands himself, and can translate the foreigner to the iullest extent. On the other hand, the foreigner can never understand the true German without a thorough and extremely laborious study of the German language, and there is no doubt that he will leave what is genuinely German untranslated. The things in these languages which can only be learnt from the foreigner himself are mostly new fashions of speech due to boredom and caprice, and one is very modest when one consents to receive instruction of this kind. In most cases one would be able, instead, to show foreigners how they ought to speak according to the primitive language and its law of change, and that the new fashion is worth- ess and offends against ancient and traditional good usage. 57. In addition to the special consequence just men tioned, the whole wealth of consequences we spoke of comes about of itself. It is, however, our intention to treat these consequences as a whole, fundamentally and comprehensively, from the point of view of the bond that unites them, in order to give in this way a thorough description of the German in contrast to the other Teutonic races. For the present I briefly indicate these consequences thus : (1) Where the people has a living language, mental t culture influences life ; where the contrary is the case, mental culture and life go their way independently of , each other. (2) For the same reason, a people of the former kind GERMANS & OTHER TEUTONS COMPARED 71 is really and truly in earnest about all mental culture and wishes it to influence life ; whereas a people of the latter kind looks upon mental culture rather as an ingeni ous game and has no wish to make it anything more. (3) From No. 2 it follows that the former has honest diligence and earnestness in all things, and takes pains ; whereas the latter is easy-going and guided by its happy nature. (4) From all this together it follows that in a nation of the former kind the mass of the people is capable of education, and the educators of such a nation test their discoveries on the people and wish to influence it ; whereas in a nation of the latter kind the educated classes separate themselves from the people and regard it as nothing more than a blind instrument of their plans/ The further discussion of the characteristics indicated I reserve for the next address. FIFTH ADDRESS THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE DIFFERENCE THAT HAS BEEN INDICATED 58. WITH the object of describing the characteristic quality of the Germans we have pointed out the funda mental difference between them and the other peoples of Teutonic descent, viz., that the former have remained in the uninterrupted flow of a primitive language which develops itself continuously out of real life, whereas the latter adopted a language which was foreign to them and which under their influence has been killed. At the end of the previous address we indicated other manifestations among these peoples, who differ from each other in the way we have shown. To-day we shall deal more fully with these manifestations, which are a necessary conse quence of that fundamental difference, and establish them more firmly on their common foundation. An investigation which endeavours to be thorough can rise too high to be involved in many disputes or to arouse much jealousy. Our method of investigation in the present instance will be the same as it was in the one to which this is a sequel. We shall take the fundamental difference that has been indicated, and deduce its con sequences step by step ; our sole concern will be to see that this deduction is correct. Whether the various manifestations which, according to this deduction, ought 72 CONSEQUENCES OF THE DIFFERENCE 735 to exist, are actually met with in experience is a question which I shall leave entirely to you and to any observer fore I decision. As regards the German especially, I shali- indeed prove at the proper time that he has in fact revealehe himself to be what our deduction shows he was bouity, to be. But, as regards Teutons in other countries, are shall have no objection if one of them, with a real undoed standing of the true nature of our present discussio, is is subsequently successful in proving that his compatrioth have been just what the Germans have been, and is ablchj to show that they are entirely free from the opposite <V characteristics. In general, our description even Jr* these opposite characteristics will not dwell on what is harsh and disadvantageous, for such a method makes victory more easy than honourable, but will merely point out what are the inevitable consequences, and will do this with as much consideration as is consistent with the truth. 59. The first consequence of that fundamental differ ence, I said, was this : among the people with a living language mental culture influences life, whereas among a people of the opposite kind mental culture and life go their separate ways. It will be useful first of all to explain more fully the meaning of this statement. First of all, when we speak here of life and of the influence exerted upon it by mental culture, we must be understood to mean primitive life in its flow from the source of all spiritual life, from God, the development of human relationships according to their archetype, and, therefore, the creation of a new life such as has never hitherto existed. We are by no means discussing the mere preservation from decay of those relationships in their present stage. StLl less have we in mind the assistance of individual members who have fallen behind in the general development. , + ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION Next, when we speak of mental culture we are to under- tand thereby, first of all, philosophy, for it is philosophy r hich scientifically comprehends the eternal archetype . all spiritual life. We must designate it by the foreign me, as the Germans have shown themselves unwilling adopt the German name l that was recently suggested, r this science, and for all science based upon it, the claim low made that it influences the life of a people who have living language. But, in apparent contrast to this ssertion, it has often been said, and by some among mrselves, that philosophy, science, the fine arts, etc., ^c ends in themselves and not handmaids of life, and that it is degrading them to esteem them according to their utility in the service of life. Here we must define these expressions more closely and guard against any misinter pretation. They are true in the following double but limited sense ; first, that it is not the duty of science or art, as some have thought, to be useful at what may be called a lower stage of life, e.g., temporal or sensuous life, or for everyday edification ; then, that an individual, in consequence of his personal seclusion from a spiritual world regarded as a whole, may be entirely absorbed in these special branches of the universal divine life without needing a stimulus from outside them, and may find in them complete satisfaction. But they are in no wise true in the strict sense, for it is just as impossible that there should be more than one end in itself as that there should be more than one Absolute. Thejsole end in itself, apart from which there can be no other, is spiritual life. Now this expresses itself in part and appears as an eternal stream, with itself as source that is, as eternal activity. This activity . eternally receives its pattern from science, and its ability to form itself according to 1 [Wissenschaftslehre, i.e. Theory of science.] CONSEQUENCES OF THE DIFFERENCE 75 this pattern from art, and in so far it might appear that } science and art exist as means to an end, which is active ) life. But in"this form of activity life itself is never com pleted and made absolute as a unity, but goes on into the infinite. Now, if life is to exist as such an absolute unity, it must be in another form. This form is that of pure thought, which produces the religious insight described in the third address, a form which, as absolute unity, is utterly incompatible with infinity of action and which can never be completely expressed in action. Hence both of them, thought as well as activity, are forms incompat- V ible only in the world of appearance, but in the work beyond appearance they are both equally one and the same absolute life. One cannot say that thought exists and exists as it does, for the sake of activity, or vice versa ; one must say that both must simply exist, since life must be a completed whole in the phenomenal world, just as it is in the /noumenal. Within this sphere, therefore, and according to this view, it is not nearly enough to say that science exerts an influence on life ; science itself is life perpetual in itself. Or, to connect this with a well-known expression, one sometimes hears the question put : What is the use of all knowledge, if one does not act in accordance with it ? This remark implies that knowledge is regarded as a means to action, and the latter as the real end. One could put the question the other way round and ask : How can we possibly act well without knowing what the Good is ? This way of expressing it would regard knowledge as con ditioning action. But both expressions are one-sided, and the truth is that both, knowledge as well as action, are in the same way inseparable elements of I rational life. 60. But science is life perpetual in itself, as we have 76 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION just expressed it, only when thought is the real mind and disposition of the one who thinks, in such a way that, without special effort and even without being clearly conscious of it, he views and judges everything else that he thinks, views, and judges according to that fundamental thought, and, if the latter exerts an influence on action, just as inevitably acts according to it. But thought is in no wise life and disposition when it is thought only as the thought of a life that is strange or foreign, however clearly and completely it may be comprehended as a thought that has a mere possibility of existence in this way, and however clearly one might think, as perhaps bomeone could think, in this fashion. In this latter case, between our thinking at second-hand and our real think ing there lies a wide field of chance and freedom a freedom that we feel no desire to use ; and so this think ing at second-hand remains apart from us ; it is a merely possible thinking, one made free from us and always freely to be repeated. In the former case thought has by itself directly taken hold of our self, and made it into itself ; and through this reality of thought for us, arising in this way, we obtain insight into its necessity. As we have just said, no freedom can forcibly bring about the latter con sequence, which must be produced of itself, and thought itself must take hold of us and form us according to itself. 61. Now this living effectiveness of thought is very much furthered and, indeed, where the thinking is of the proper depth and strength, even made inevitable, by think ing and designating in a living language. The symbol in such a language is itself directly living and sensuous ; it re-presents all real life and so takes hold of and exerts an influence on life. To the possessor of such a language spirit speaks directly and reveals itself as man does to man. But the symbol of a dead language does not stimulate CONSEQUENCES OF THE DIFFERENCE 77 anything directly ; in order to enter the living stream of such a language one must first recapitulate knowledge acquired by the study of history from a world that has died, and transport one s self into an alien mode of thought. How superabundant must be the impulse of one s own thinking, if it does not grow weary in this long,< and wide field of history and in the end modestly content itself with the region of history. If the thinking of the possessor of a living language does not become alive, he may rightly be accused of not having thought at all and of having merely indulged in reverie. The possessor of a dead language, however, cannot in a similar case be similarly accused without hesitation ; it may be that he has " thought " after his own fashion, i.e., carefully developed the conceptions deposited in his language. Only he has not done that which, if he succeeded in doing it, would be accounted a miracle. Incidentally it is evident that the impulse to thinking, in the case of a people with a dead language, will be most powerful and produce the greatest apparent results in the beginning, when the language has not yet become clear enough to everyone. It is also evident that, as soon as the language becomes clearer and more definite, this impulse to thinking will tend more and more to die away in the chains of the language. It is further evident that in the end the philosophy of a people of this kind will consciously resign itself to the fact that it is only an explanation of the dictionary, or, as un-German spirits/ among us have expressed it in a more high-sounding ( fashion, a jnetacritic of language ; and, finally, that such a people will acknowledge some mediocre didactic poem in comedy form on the subject of hypocrisy to be its greatest philosophical work. 1 1 [Fichte seems to refer here to Moliere s T artujfe .~\ 78 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION 62. In this way, I say, spiritual culture and here especially thinking in a primitive language is meant does not exert an influence on life ; it is itself the life of him who thinks in this fashion. Nevertheless it necessarily strives, from the life that thinks in this way, to influence other life outside it, and so to influence the life of all about it and to form this life in accordance with .itself. For, just because that kind of thinking is life, it lis felt by its possessor with inward pleasure in its vitalizing, (transfiguring, and liberating power. But everyone to whose inmost being happiness has been revealed is bound to wish that everyone else may experience the same bliss ; he is thus driven, and must work, to the end that the stream from 4 which he has drawn his own well-being may spread itself over others too. It is different with him who has merely apprehended the possibility of second-hand thinking. Just as its substance yields him neither weal nor woe, but merely occupies his leisure agreeably and enter tainingly, so it is impossible for him to believe that it can bring weal or woe to anyone else. In the end it is to him a matter of indifference on what subject anyone exercises his ingenuity or with what he occupies his hours of leisure. 63. Of the means of introducing into the lives of all the thought that has begun in the life of the individual, the highest and best is oery ; hence this is the second main branch of the spiritual culture of a people. The thinker designates his thought in language, and this, as we have said above, cannot be done except by images of sense and, moreover, by an act of creation extending beyond the previous range of sensuous imagery. In doing this the thinker is himself a poet ; if he is not a poet, language will fail him when his first thought comes, and, when he attempts the second, thought itself will CONSEQUENCES OF THE DIFFERENCE 79 depart from him. An extension and amplification of the language s range of sensuous imagery having thus been begun by the thinker, to send it in flood through the whole field of sensuous images, so that every image may receive its appropriate share of the new spiritual ennoblement and so that the whole of life, down to its deepest depths of sense, may appear steeped in the new ray of light, may be well-pleasing, and may unwittingly give the illusion of ennobling itself to do this is the work of true poetry. Only a living language can have such poetry, for only in such a language can the range of sensuous imagery be extended by creative thought, and only in it does what has already been created remain alive and open to the influence of kindred life. Such a language has within itself the power of infinite poetry, ever refreshing and renewing its youth, for every stirring of living thought in it opens up a new vein of poetic enthusiasm. To such a language, therefore, poetry is the highest and best means of flooding the life of all with the spiritual culture that has been attained. It is quite impossible for a dead language to have poetry in this higher sense, for none of the conditions necessary to poetry exist in it. Such a language can have, how ever, though only for a limited period, a substitute for poetry in the following way. The_qutpourings of the art of poetry in the original language will attract attention. The new people, indeed, cannot go on making poetry in the path that has been begun, for this is foreign to its life, but it can introduce its own life and its new circumstances into the sphere of sensuous imagery and poetry in which the preceding age expressed its own life ; it can, for example, dress up its knights as heroes, and vice versa, and make the ancient gods exchange raiment with the new ones. It is precisely this placing 8o ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION of unfamiliar vesture upon the commonplace that gives it a charm akin to that produced by idealization, and the result will be quite pleasing figures. But the range of sensuous and poetical imagery in the original language on the one hand, and the new conditions of life on the other, are finite and limited quantities. At some point their mutual penetration is completed ; and when that point is reached the people celebrates its golden age and the source of its poetry runs dry. Somewhere or other there must be a highest point in the adaptation of fixed words to fixed ideas, and of fixed imagery to fixed con ditions of life. When this point has been reached this people must do one of two things. It can either repeat its most successful masterpieces in a different form, so that they look as if they were something new, although they are in fact nothing but the old familiar things. Or else, if it is determined to achieve something entirely new, it can seek refuge in the unbecoming and the unseemly. In this case their poetic art will mix together the ugly and the beautiful and have recourse to carica ture and humour, while their prose will be compelled to confuse ideas and to jumble virtue and vice together. This they must do if they seek new forms of expression. 64. When mental culture and life thus go their own separate ways in a nation, the natural consequence is that those classes who have no access to mental culture, and who do not even receive the results of it as they would in a living nation, are placed at a disadvantage as compared with the educated classes and are regarded, so to speak, as a different species of humanity, unequal to them in mental power from the beginning and by the mere fact of birth. Another consequence is that the educated classes have no truly loving sympathy with them and are not impelled to give them thorough aid, CONSEQUENCES OF THE DIFFERENCE 81 for they believe that their original inequality makes them quite incapable of being aided. It follows also that the educated classes are tempted rather to make use of them as they are and to let them be so used. Although even this consequence of the death of the language can be mitigated in the first years of the new nation by a humanitarian religion and by the lack of special skill among the higher classes, yet, as time goes on, this despising of the people will become more and more unconcealed and cruel. That is why the educated classes assume superiority and give themselves airs ; and there is in addition a special reason closely connected with it which, as it has had a very extensive influence even on the Germans, must be mentioned here. It arises from the fact that in the beginning the Romans called themselves barbarians and their own language barbarous, as contrasted with the Greeks. In this they very ingenuously repeated what the Greeks had said about them. Afterwards the Romans handed on the description they had taken upon themselves, and found among the Teutons the same unquestioning simplicity as they themselves had shown towards the Greeks. The Teutons believed that the only possible way to get rid of barbarism was to become Romans. The immi grants to what was formerly Roman soil became as Roman as they possibly could. But in their imagination the term " barbarous " soon acquired the secondary meaning of " common, plebeian, and loutish," and in this way " Roman," on the contrary, became synonymous with " distinguished." This way of looking at it affected the Teutonic languages in general and in particular ; in general, since, when measures were taken deliberately and consciously to mould the language, they were directed towards throwing out the Teutonic roots and forming 6 82 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION . the words fromLatin roots, and thus creating the Romance language as the language of the court and of the educated classes. But the particular result is that, whenever two words have the same meaning, the one from a Teutonic root almost without exception denotes what is base and ignoble, and the one from the Latin root what is nobler and more distinguished. 65. This endemic disease of the whole Teutonic race, as it might be called, attacks the German in the mother- country too, if he is not armed against it by a high earnestness. Even in our ears it is easy for Latin to sound distinguished, even to our eyes Roman customs appear nobler and everything German on the contrary vulgar ; and as we were not so fortunate as to acquire all this at first-hand, we take much pleasure in receiving it at second-hand through the medium of the neo-Latin nations. 1 So long as we are German we appear to our- 1 [Fichte adds this note here : In our opinion the decision as to the greater or less euphony of a language should not be based upon the direct impression, which depends on so many matters of chance. Even a judg ment of this kind should be founded on definite principles. The merit of a language in this respect should undoubtedly be, first of all, that it exhausts and comprehensively presents the possibilities of the human organs of speech, and, secondly, that it combines the separate sounds in a natural and convenient unity. Hence it follows that nations who only half develop their organs of speech, and that in a one-sided fashion, who avoid certain soundsor combinations under the pretext of difficulty or cacophony, and who esteem euphonious only what they are accustomed to hear and can them selves pronounce such nations have no say in an investigation of this kind. This is not the place to deliver judgment according to those higher principles on the German language in this respect. Latin itself, the parent language, is pronounced by each neo-European nation in its own way, and it would not be easy to restore its true pronunciation. There remains, therefore, only this question, whether the German language when compared with neo-Latin languages sounds so bad, hard, and harsh as some are inclined to think. Until this question is thoroughly decided, we may meanwhile at least explain how it happens that it does seem so to foreigners, and to Germans too, even when they are unprejudiced and free from preferences or hate. CONSEQUENCES OF THE DIFFERENCE 83 selves men like any others ; when half or more than half our vocabulary is non-German, and when we adopt conspicuous customs and wear conspicuous clothes which seem to come from foreign parts, then we fancy ourselves distinguished. But the summit of our triumph is reached when we are no longer taken for Germans, but actually for Spaniards or Englishmen, whichever of the two happens to be the more fashionable at the moment. We are right. Naturalness on the German side, arbitrariness and artificiality on the foreign side, are the fundamental differences. If we keep to the former we are just like all our fellow-Germans, who understand us and accept us as their equals ; only when we seek refuge in the latter do we become incomprehensible to our fellows, who take us to be of a different nature. This unnatural- ness comes of itself into the life of foreign countries, because their life, deviated from nature originally ....and \ in a matter _of__the_first importance. But we Germans must first seek it out and accustom ourselves to the belief that -something is beautiful, proper, and convenient, which does not naturally appear so to us. The main reason for all this in the case of the German is his belief in the greater distinction of romanized countries, together with his craving to be just as distinguished and arti ficially to create in Germany too that gulf between the A people as yet uncultivated, with a very lively power of imagination, and at the same time childlike in mind and free from national vanity (the Teutons seem to have had all these qualities) is attracted by what is far away, and likes to make remote countries and distant islands the habitation for the objects of its desires and the glories of which it dreams. Such a people develops a sense of romance (the word explains itself and no more suitable one could be invented). Sounds and tones from those regions touch this sense and awaken its whole world of wonders ; hence they are pleasing. This may be the reason why our countrymen who emigrated gave up their own language for a foreign one so easily, and also why we, their kindred so very far removed, find even now such wondrous pleasure in these tones.] 84 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION r upper classes and the people, which came about naturally / in foreign countries. I shall content myself with having indicated the main source of this love of foreign ways which is to be found among Germans ; on another occa sion I shall show how widespread its effects have been, and how all the evils which have now brought us to ruin are of foreign origin. Of course it was only when united with German earnestness and influence on life that such evils were bound to bring destruction in their train. 66. In addition to these two manifestations resulting * from the fundamental difference firstly, that mental / culture either does or does not influence life, and, secondly, that between the educated classes and the people a dividing wall either does or does not exist I cited the following manifestation, that the people with a living language " will possess diligence and earnestness and take pains in all things, whereas the people with a dead language will rather look upon mental activity as an ingenious game, and will be easy-going and guided by its happy nature. This circumstance is a natural result of what has been said above. Among the people with a living language investigation proceeds from a vital need, which is thereby to be satisfied ; hence, investigation receives all the com pelling impulses which life has in itself. But among the people with a dead language investigation seeks nothing more than to pass away the time in a manner that is pleasant and in keeping with the sense of the beautiful, and it has attained its object completely when it has done this. With foreigners the latter course is almost inevitable, but when a German boasts about his genius and his happy nature he displays a love of foreign ways which is unworthy of him and which, like every imitation of foreign ways, arise^-frsm_j:he craving- te-~ be- distinguished. It is true that nothing excellent will be produced in any nation CONSEQUENCES OF THE DIFFERENCE 85 in the world without a primitive impulse in man which, as something supersensuous, is rightly called Genius, to give it the foreign name. But this impulse in itself only stimulates the power of imagination, and brings forth in it figures that hover above the ground but are never completely defined. To bring these down completed to the ground of actual life and to fix them firmly thereinJ this requires thought, diligent, deliberate, and in accord-/ ance with a definite principle. Genius delivers tG diligence the stuff to be worked upon, and the latter with out the former would have to work upon either what had been worked upon already or else upon nothing at all. But diligence brings this stuff, which without it would remain an empty game, into life ; and so it is only when united that the two can achieve anything ; divided they can do nothing. Moreover, in a people with a dead language no truly creative genius can express itself, because they lack the primitive power of designation ; they can only develop what has already been begun and convey it into the whole existing and completed system of designation. 67. When we consider the question of taking greater j pains, it is natural that this can be done by the people I with the living language. A living language can stand 1 on a higher level of culture in comparison with another, but it can never in itself attain that perfection of develop ment which a dead language quite easily attains. In the latter the connotation of words is fixed, and the possibilities of suitable combinations will also gradually become exhausted. Hence, he who wishes to speak this language must speak it just as it is ; but, after he has once learnt to do this, the language speaks itself in his mouth and thinks and imagines for him. But in a living lan guage, if _only life in it is really liv-ed^. the words and their meanings increase and change continually, and for that 86 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION very reason new combinations become possible ; and the language, which never is, but eternally is becoming, does not speak itself, but he wrio wisHes to Use IF must speak it himself in his own fashion and creatively for his own needs. The latter undoubtedly demands far more ^diligence and practice than the former. Similarly, the investigations of a people with a living language go down, as we have already said, to the root where ideas stream forth from spiritual nature itself ; whereas the investiga tions of a people with a dead language only seek to pene trate a foreign idea and to make themselves comprehen sible. Hence, the investigations of the latter are in fact only historical and expository, but those of the former are truly philosophical. It is quite plain, too, that an investigation of the latter kind may be completed sooner and more easily than one of the former. So we may say that genius in foreign lands will strew with flowers the well-trodden military roads of antiquity, and weave a becoming robe for that wisdom of life which it will easily take for philosophy. The German spirit, on the other hand, will open up new shafts and bring the light of day into their abysses, and hurl up rocky masses of thoughts, out of which ages to come will build their dwellings. The foreign genius will be a delightful sylph, which hovers in graceful flight above the flowers that have sprung of themselves from its soil, settles on them without causing them to bend, and drinks up their refreshing dew. Or we may call it a bee, which with busy art gathers the honey from the same flowers and deposits it with charming tidiness in cells of regular construction. B4^-4h^Gerrnan spirit is an eagle, whose mighty body thrusts itself orT high anxTsoars on strong and well-practised wing into the empyrean, that it may rise nearer to the sun whereon it delights to gaze. CONSEQUENCES OF THE DIFFERENCE 87 68. Now let us sum up in one main point of view all that has hitherto been said. In general, when we con sider the history of civilization in a race of men which is split up in history into an age of antiquity and a new world, we shall find on the whole that the function of these two main branches in the original development of this new world is as follows. That part of the vigorous nation which has gone abroad and adopted the language of antiquity thereby acquires a much closer relation ship to antiquity. At the beginning it will be far easier for this part of the nation to grasp the language of anti quity in its first and unchanged form, to penetrate the memorials of its culture, and to bring into them enough fresh life to enable them to be adapted to the new life that has arisen. In short, it is from them that the study of classical antiquity has taken its way over modern Europe. In its enthusiasm for the unsolved problems of antiquity it will continue to work at them, but, of course, only as one works at a problem that has been set, not by the needs of life, but by mere curiosity. It will take them lightly and not whole-heartedly, grasping them merely with the power of imagination, and solely in this medium giving them, as it were, an airy body. The very wealth of material bequeathed by antiquity, and the ease with which the work can be carried on in this fashion, will enable them to bring an abundance of such images into the field of vision of the modern world. Now, when these images of the ancient world in their new form reach that part of the original stock which, by its reten tion of the language, has remained in the stream of original culture, they will arouse the attention of the people and stimulate them to activity on their own part ; though, perhaps, these images, if they had remained in the old form, would have passed before them unheeded and 88 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION unperceived. But as soon as they have really grasped them and not, as it were, merely passed them on from hand to hand, they will grasp them as their nature impels them to do, not merely as knowledge of a foreign life, but as an element of their own life. So they will not only derive them from the life of the new world, but also bring them into it again, incarnating the hitherto merely airy figures in solid bodies that will endure in real life. These figures, thus transformed in a way that would never have been possible to foreign countries, the latter now receive from them again. Through this channel alone is a development of the human race possible on the path of antiquity, a union of the two main portions, and a regular progress of human evolution. In this new order of things the mother-country will not actually invent anything ; but, in the smallest as in the greatest matters, it will always have to acknowledge that it has been stimulated by some hint from abroad. The foreign countries themselves were in their turn stimulated by the ancients, but the mother-country will take earnestly, and bring into life, what other countries have only super ficially and hastily sketched out. As we have already said, this is not the place to illustrate this relationship by striking and far-reaching examples. This we reserve for our next address. 69. In this way both parts of the joint nation remained one, and only in this simultaneous separation and unity do they form a graft on the stem of the culture of antiquity, which otherwise would have been broken off by the new age, and so humanity would have begun again from the beginning. The two parts have these vocations laid upon them, different at the starting-point but coming together at the goal ; each part must recognize its own CONSEQUENCES OF THE DIFFERENCE 89 vocation and that of the other, and in accordance there with each part must make use of the other. It is especi ally necessary for each part to consent to assist the other and to leave its characteristic quality untouched, if good progress is to be made in the general and complete culture of the whole. The recognition of this ought to come first from the mother-country, which has been endowed in the first place with the sense of profundity. But if ever foreign countries, in their blindness to this relation ship, should be so far carried away by what appears on the surface as to attempt to deprive their mother-country of its independence and so to destroy and absorb it, they would thereby, if their attempt succeeded, sever for themselves the last vein connecting them with nature and with life, and fall defenceless into spiritual death, which indeed, apart from this, has been revealing itself to be their true nature more and more clearly as time has gone on. Then the hitherto continuous stream of the development of our race would be in fact at an end ; barbarism would be bound to begin again and to go on without hope of deliverance, until we were all living in caves again like wild beasts and, like them, devouring one another. That this is really so and must inevitably follow, only the German can see, of course, and only he ! shall see it. To the foreigner, who, since he knows no ; foreign culture, has unlimited scope to admire himself j in his own, it must and it may always appear preposterous blasphemy proceeding from ill-educated ignorance. Non-German countries are the earth, from which fruitful vapours detach themselves and arise to the clouds, and by which even now the old gods condemned to Tartarus keep in touch with the sphere of life. Th<l mother-country is the eternal sky enveloping the earth] the sky in which the light vapours are condensed to clouds 9 o ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION which, impregnated by the lightning flash of the Thunderer from the other world, descend in the form of fertilizing rain, uniting sky and earth and causing the gifts whose home is in the sky to germinate in the lap of earth. Do new Titans once more want to take heaven by storm ? It will not be heaven for them, for they are earth-born, and the very sight and influence of heaven will be taken from them. Only their earth will remain to them, a cold, gloomy, and barren habitation. But, says a Roman poet, what could a Typhceus do, or the mighty Mimas, or Porphyrion with his threats, or Enceladus, the rash hurler of uprooted tree-trunks, if they flung themselves against the resounding shield of Pallas ? It is this very shield that will undoubtedly cover us too, if we under stand how to betake ourselves to its protection. SIXTH ADDRESS GERMAN CHARACTERISTICS AS EXHIBITED IN HISTORY 70. IN our last address we stated what would be the chief differences between a people that has developed in its original language and a people that has adopted, a foreign one. We said at the time that, so far as foreign countries were concerned, we would leave it to each observer s own judgment to decide whether those mani festations had in fact occurred which, according to our assertions, were bound to occur. But with regard to the Germans we undertook to prove that they had in fact turned out to be what, according to our assertions, a people with a primitive language was bound to be. To-day we proceed to the fulfilment of our promise ; and we prove our assertions, first of all, by the latest great and, in a certain sense, completed achievement of the German people, an achievement of world-wide importance the reformation of the Church. 71. Christianity, which originated in Asia, and in the days of its corruption became more Asiatic than ever, preaching only silent resignation and blind faith, was something strange and foreign even to the Romans. They never really laid hold of and assimilated it, and their nature was divided by it into two halves that did not fit each other ; nevertheless, the foreign part was joined on by means of their inherited and melancholy 91 92 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION superstition. In the immigrant Teutons this religion found disciples who had no previous intellectual educa tion to hinder its acceptance, but also no hereditary superstition favourable to it. Hence, it was presented to them as one of the things that formed part of the equip ment of a Roman, which is what they wanted to become ; but it had no special influence on their life. These Christian educators would obviously not let their new converts know any more than suited their purpose about the ancient culture of Rome or its language, the key to its culture ; and here, too, we have a reason for the decay and death of the Latin language in their mouth. When later the untouched and genuine works of the old culture fell into the hands of these peoples, and when the impulse to think and understand for themselves was thereby stirred into action, then, partly because this impulse was new and fresh to them, and partly because they had no inherited terror of the gods to act as a counterpoise, the contradiction between blind faith and the strange things that in course of time had become its objects was bound to strike them far more sharply than it had struck the Romans themselves when Christianity first came to them. The perception of an utter contradic tion in what one has hitherto faithfully believed excites laughter. ^Those who had solved the riddle laughed and mocked ; and even the priests, who had also solved it, laughed with the rest ; they could do so in safety, because only very few people had access to the classical culture which broke the spell. Here I refer especially to Italy, the chief seat of neo-Latin culture at that time, the other neo-Latin races being still very far behind Italy in every respect. They laughed at the deception, because there was no earnestness in them to turn bitter. Their exclusive GERMAN CHARACTERISTICS 93 possession of rare knowledge strengthened them in their position as a distinguished and educated class, and so they were quite willing that the great multitude, for whom they had no feeling, should remain under the sway of the deception and thus be more subservient to their purposes. This state of things a people deceived, and their betters making use of the deception and laughing at them might have continued ; and it would probably have continued until the end of time, if there had been none but neo- Latins in the modern world. Here you have a clear proof of what I said about the continuation of ancient culture by the new, and about the share the neo-Latins are able to have in it. The new light proceeded from the ancients and, falling first upon the central point of neo-Latin culture, was there developed into nothing more than an intellectual view of things, without taking hold of life and shaping it differently. 72. But it was impossible for the existing state of things to continue once this light had fallen upon a soul whose religion was truly earnest and concerned about life, when this soul was surrounded by a people to whom it could easily impart its more earnest view, and when this people found leaders who cared about its urgent needs. However low Christianity may fall, there always remains in it an essential part which contains truth and which is sure to stimulate life, if only it is real and independent life. That part is the question : What shall we do to be saved ? When this question fell on barren soil, where either it remained undecided whether such a thing as salvation was really possible, or else, even if that was assumed, there was still no firm and decided will to be saved on such soil religion from the very beginning did not affect life and will, but remained suspended in 94 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION the memory and the imagination like a faint and quivering shadow. So all further enlightenment concerning the condition of the existing religious ideas was similarly bound to remain without influence on life. But when, on the other hand, that question fell upon soil that by nature was living, where there was an earnest belief that salvation existed and a firm will to be saved, where the means of salvation prescribed by the existing religion h^d been employed to that intent with inward faith, honesty, and earnestness, and where, moreover, this very earnestness long kept from the light the quality of the prescribed means of salvation when, I say, the new light fell at last upon such a soil as this, the inevitable result was horror and loathing of this deception in the matter of the soul s salvation, and an unrest impelling them to secure salvation in another way. What appeared to be a rushing towards eternal ruin could not be treated as if it were a joke. Moreover, the individual who was first possessed by this view of the matter could not possibly be content with saving only his own soul, and remain indifferent to the welfare of all other immortal souls ; for, if he had, he would thereby have saved not even his own soul. Such was the teaching of his more profound religion. He was bound, on the contrary, to wrestle for all mankind with the same anxiety that he felt for his > own soul, so that the whole world might have its eyes opened to the damnable delusion. 73. It was in this way that the light fell upon the soul of the German man, Luther. Long before him very many foreigners had seen the light and comprehended it more clearly with the intellect. In refinement, in classical culture, in learning, and in other things he was surpassed, not only by foreigners, but even by many of his own nation. He, however, was possessed by an all-powerful impulse. GERMAN CHARACTERISTICS 95 the anxiety about eternal salvation, and this became the life of his life, made him always throw his life into the scale, and gave him the power and the gifts which are the admiration of posterity. Others during the Reforma tion may have had earthly aims, but they would never have been victorious had there not been at their head a leader inspired by the eternal. That this man, who ; always saw that the salvation of all immortal souls was at stake, fearlessly and in all earnestness went to meet all the devils in hell, is natural and in no way a wonder. Here we have a proof of German earnestness of soul. \! It was in the nature of things, as we "have said, that Luther should turn to all men with this question, which concerns all men and which each man must deal with for himself. First of all he turned to the whole of his own nation. How, then, did his people respond to this pro posal ? Did they remain in their dull placidity, chained to the,, ground by the cares of the world, and going on un- disfurbed in the accustomed path ? Or did this mighty enthusiasm, such as is not manifested every day, merely excitip them to laughter ? By no means ! They were seized by the same concern for the salvation of their souls ; like fire it spread among them ; and so their eyes, too, were q.uickly opened to the fullness of light, and they were quick Vo accept what was offered to them. Was this enthusiasm merely a momentary elevation of the imagina tion, una ble to hold its ground in daily life with its stern struggles ajid dangers ? By no means ! They renounced all, endure<4 all tortures, and fought in bloody and in decisive wars^ solely that they might not again come under the power of *the accursed Papacy, but that the light of the gospel, whurh alone can save, might shine upon them and upon their children s children. There were renewed among them, late in time, all the miracles that Chris- 96 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION tianity showed forth among those who professed it when it began. All the utterances of that period are filled with this universal concern for salvation. Behold in this a \~proof of the characteristic quality of the German jpeople. By enthusiasm it can easily be raised to enthusiasm and clearness of any kind whatsoever, and its enthusiasm ^endures for life and transforms life. 74. In earlier times and in *ther places reformers had inspired masses of the people, and. gathered and formed them into communities. Yet these communities found no firm abiding-place on the foundation of the existing constitution, because the princes and rulers of the people did not come over to their side. At first no more favour able destiny seemed to await Luther s Reformation. The wise Elector, under whose eyes it began, seemed to be wise rather in the foreign than in the German sense. He did not appear to have any special grasp of the real question at issue, nor to attach much importance to what seemed to him a quarrel between two orders of monks ; at the most he was concerned merely about the good reputation of his newly-founded University. But he had successors who, though far less wise than he:, were seized by the same earnest care for their salvation as lived in their peoples, and by this likeness were- fused with them into one body for life or death, defeat or victory. Behold in this an illustration of the above-mentioned characteristic of the Germans as a single body, and of their constitution as established by nature. < The great events of national or world importance h .ave hitherto been brought before the people by speakers who came forward voluntarily, and the people hane taken up the cause. Though their princes, from lo/ve of foreign ways and the craving for brilliance and distinction, might at GERMAN CHARACTERISTICS 97 first separate themselves, as those did, from the nation and abandon or betray it, they were afterwards easily swept into unanimity with the nation and took pity on their peoples. That the former has always been the case we shall prove more clearly hereafter by further illustra tions ; that the latter may always continue to be the case we can only wish with fervent yearning. 75. One must confess that there was a darkness and unclearness in the anxiety of that generation about the salvation of souls, since it was a question, not merely of changing the external mediator between God and man, but of needing no external mediator at all and of finding the bond of connection in one s self. Nevertheless, it was perhaps necessary that the religious education of mankind should go through this intermediate state. Luther s own honest zeal gave him more than he sought, and carried him far beyond his own dogmatic system. Once he had successfully overcome the first inward con flicts, produced by his conscientious scruples when he boldly broke away from the whole existing faith, all his utterances are full of jubilation and triumph about the freedom won for the children of God, who assuredly no longer sought for salvation outside themselves and beyond the grave, but were themselves a manifestation of the immediate feeling of salvation. In this he became the pattern for all generations to come, and died for us all. Behold in this also a characteristic of the German spirit. If it but seeks, it finds more than it sought, for it comes into the stream of living life, which flows on of itself and carries the seeker on with it. 76. To the Papacy, when taken and judged according to its own view of the matter, wrong was undoubtedly done by the way in which it was taken by the Reformation. Its utterances were for the most part picked at random 7 9 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION from the existing language ; they exaggerated in Asiatic and rhetorical fashion and were intended to have what ever validity they could ; they reckoned on more than due deduction being made in any case, but were never seriously measured, weighed, or intended. The Reforma tion took them with German seriousness at their full weight ; it was right in thinking that everything should be taken thus, but wrong in thinking that the others had actually so taken it, and in blaming them for anything more than their natural superficiality and lack of thorough ness. In general, we may say that this is what always happens in every conflict of German seriousness with the foreign spirit, whether the latter is found in foreign or in German lands ; the foreign spirit is quite unable to comprehend how anyone can wish to raise such a great to-do about unimportant things like words and phrases. Foreigners, when they hear it again from German mouths, deny that they said what they did in fact say, and what they go on saying and always will say. So they complain of calumny, or pushing consistency too far, as they call it, when one takes their utterances in their literal sense and as seriously intended, and treats them as part of a logical sequence of thought, which one traces back to its principles and forward to its conclusions ; although one is perhaps very far from attributing to them in person a clear consciousness of what they say or any logical consistency. In the demand that one must take every thing as it is meant, but not go further and call in question the right to have opinions and to express them in that demand the foreign spirit always betrays itself, however deeply it may be concealed. 77. The seriousness with which the old system of religious doctrine was now taken compelled this system itself to be more serious than it had been hitherto, GERMAN CHARACTERISTICS 99 and to undertake a new examination, interpretation, and consolidation of the old doctrine and practice for the future. Let this, and the example that is to follow, be to you an illustration of the way in which Germany has always reacted on the rest of Europe. The general result was that the old doctrine thus obtained, at any rate, such innocuous efficacy as was possible to it, once it had been resolved not to abandon it altogether. But in particular, to those who supported it, it became an oppor tunity for, and a challenge to, more thorough and consistent reflection than had been given to it before. The doc trine, thus reformed in Germany, spread into the neo- Latin countries and there produced the same result, viz., a loftier enthusiasm ; but, as this phenomenon was tran sitory, we shall say no more about it here. It is, how ever, noteworthy that in none of the entirely neo-Latin countries did the new doctrine obtain permanent recog nition by the State, for it seems that German thoroughness among the rulers and German good-nature among the people were needed, if this doctrine was to be found compatible and made compatible with the supreme power. 78. In another respect, however, Germany exercised a general and permanent influence on other countries though, indeed, not on the common people, but on the educated classes by its reformation of the Church. By means of this influence Germany once more made other countries its forerunners and its instigators to new creations. Free and spontaneous thinking, or philo sophy, had frequently been stimulated and practised in the preceding centuries under the dominion of the old doctrine ; not, however, to bring forth truth out of itself, but solely to show that the doctrine of the Church was true and in what way it was true. Among the ioo ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION German Protestants, philosophy was at first given the same task in regard to their doctrine, and with them it became the handmaid of the gospel, just as with the Schoolmen it had been the handmaid of the Church. In foreign countries, which either had no gospel or else had not apprehended it with pure German devotion and depth of soul, this free-thinking, fanned into flame by the brilliant triumph it had achieved, rose higher and more easily, unfettered by a belief in the supersensuous. It remained fettered, however, by a belief of the senses in the natural understanding \Verstand~\ that develops without mental or moral training. Far from discovering in the reason [Fernunft\ the source of truth which rests upon itself, the utterances of this raw understanding were to this way of thinking exactly what the Church was for the Schoolmen and the gospel for the first Protes tant theologians. As to whether they were true, not the slightest doubt was raised ; the only question was how they could maintain this truth against hostile assertions. But, as this way of thinking did not even enter the domain of the reason, whose Opposition would have been more important, it found no opponent except the exist ing historical religion. This it easily disposed of by applying to it the measure of understanding or common sense, which was presupposed, and thereby proving to its own satisfaction that this religion was in direct con tradiction to the latter. Hence it came about that, as soon as all this was made quite plain, the word " philo sopher " became synonymous with " irreligious atheist " in foreign countries, and both designations served as equally honourable marks of distinction. 79. This attempt at complete emancipation from all belief in external authority, which was the right thing about these struggles in foreign countries, acted as a fresh GERMAN CHARACTERISTICS ii stimulus to the Germans, from whom it had first pro ceeded by means of the reformation of the Church. It is true that second-rate and unoriginal minds among us simply repeated this foreign doctrine better the foreign doctrine, it seems, than the doctrine of their fellow- countrymen, though this was to be had just as easily ; the reason being that they took the former to be more distinguished and these minds tried to convince them selves about it, so far as that was possible. But where the independent German spirit was astir, the sensuous was not enough, and there arose the problem of dis covering the supersensuous (which is, of course, not to be believed in on external authority) in the reason itself, I and thus of creating for the first time tru__ghilosophy I by makin_free_thought the sourcejofjndependent truth, as it should be. To that end Leibniz strove inTiis conflict with that foreign philosophy ; and the end was attained by the true founder of modern German philo sophy, 1 not without a confession of having been aroused to it by the utterance of a foreigner, which had, however, been taken more profoundly than it had been intended. Since that time the problem has been completely solved among us, and philosophy has been perfected. One must be content for the present with stating this as a fact, until an age comes which comprehends it. On this condition, the result once more would be the creation in the German mother-country, on the stimulus o^ antiquity which has come to it through neo-Latin lands,! of a new age such as never existed before. 80. We, their contemporaries, have seen how the inhabitants of a foreign country 2 took up lightly, and 1 [Kant, who confessed to having been roused from his " dogmatic slumber " by Hume.] 2 [The reference is to the French Revolution.] 102 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION with fervent daring, another problem of reason and philo sophy for the modern world the establishment of the perfect State. But, shortly afterwards, they abandoned this task so completely that they are compelled by their present condition to condemn the very thought of the problem as a crime, and they had to use every means to delete, if possible, those efforts from the annals of their history. The reason for this result is as clear as day ; the State in accordance with reason cannot be built up by artificial measures from whatever material may be at hand ; on the contrary, the nation must first be trained [< and educated up to it. Only the nation which has first solved in actual practice the problem of educating p perfect men will then solve also the problem of the u perfect State. Since our reformation of the Church, the last-men tioned problem of education has more than once been attempted by foreign countries in a spirited fashion, but in accordance with their own philosophy ; and among us a first result of their efforts has been to stimulate some to imitation and exaggeration. To what point the German spirit once more has finally brought this matter in our days we shall relate in more detail at the proper time. 81. In what has been said you have a clear conspectus of the whole history of culture in the modern world, and of the never-varying relationship of the different parts of the modern world to the world of antiquity. True religion, in the form of Christianity, was the germ of the modern world ; and the task of the latter may be feummed up as follows : to make this religion permeate rthe previous culture of antiquity and thereby to spiritualize land hallow it. The first step on this path was to rid this religion of the external respect of form which robbed GERMAN CHARACTERISTICS 103 it of freedom, and to introduce into it also the free- thinking of antiquity. Foreign countries provided the stimulus to this step ; the German took the step. The second step, which is really the continuation and com pletion of the first, namely, to discover in our own selves this religion, and with it all wisdom this, too, was pre pared by foreign countries and completed by the German. The next step forward that we have to make in the plan \ of eternity is to educate the nation to perfect manhood. \ Without this, the philosophy that has been won will never be widely comprehended, much less will it be generally applicable in life. On the other hand, and in the same) way, the art of education will never attain complete! clearness in itself without philosophy. Hence, there is an interaction between the two, and either without the other is incomplete and unserviceable. If only because the German has hitherto brought to completion all the steps of culture and has been preserved in the modern world for that special purpose, it will be his work, too, in respect of education. But, when education has once been set in order, the same will follow easily with the other concerns of humanity. 82. This, then, is the actual relationship in which the German nation has hitherto stood with regard to the development of the human race in the modern age. We have still to throw more light upon an observation, which has already been made twice, as to the natural course of development which events have taken with our nation, viz., that in Germany all culture has proceeded ^ from the people. That the reformation of the Church waTs ""first brought before the people, and that it succeeded only because it became their affair, we have already seen. But we have further to show that this single case was not an exception ; it has, on the contrary, been the rule. io 4 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION 83* The Germans who remained in the motherland had retained all the virtues of which their country had formerly been the home loyalty, uprightness, honour, a"nd simplicity ; but of training to a higher and intellectual life they had received no more than could be brought by the Christianity of that period and its teachers to men whose dwellings were scattered. This was but little : hence, they were not so advanced as their racial kinsmen who had emigrated. They were in fact good and honest, it is true, but none the less semi-barbarians. There arose among them, however, cities erected by members of the people. In these cities every branch of culture quickly developed into the fairest bloom. In them arose civic constitutions and organizations which, though but on a small scale, were none the less of high excellence ; $nd, proceeding from them, a picture of order and a love m it spread throughout the rest of the country. Their extensive commerce helped to discover the world. Their league was feared by kings. The monuments of their architecture are standing at the present day and have defied the ravages of centuries; before them posterity stands in admiration and confesses its own impotence. 84. It is not my intention to compare these burghers of the German imperial cities in the Middle Ages with the other estates of the same period, nor to ask what was being done at that time by the nobles and the princes. But, in comparison with the other Teutonic nations leaving out of account some districts of Italy, and in the fine arts the Germans did not lag behind even these, whereas in the ^ useful arts they surpassed them and became their teachers leaving these out of account, I say that the German burghers were the civilized people, and the others the barbarians>-iThe history of Germany, of German might, German enterprise and inventions, of GERMAN CHARACTERISTICS 105 German monuments and the German spirit the history of all these things during that period is nothing but the history of those cities ; and everything else, for example the mortgaging of petty territories and their subsequent redemption and so on, is unworthy of mention. More over, this period is the only one in German history in which this nation is famous and brilliant, and holds the rank to which, as the parent stock, it is entitled. As soon as its bloom is destroyed by the avarice and tyranny of princes, and as soon as its freedom is trodden under foot, the whole nation gradually sinks lower and lower, until the condition is reached in which we are at present. But, as Germany sinks, the rest of Europe is seen to sink 1 with it, if we regard, not the mere external appearance, but the soul. ^ The decisive influence of this bu,rgh^rxla.ss^ which was 1 in fact the ruling power, upon the development of the German imperial constitution, upon the reformation of the Church, and upon everything that ever character ized the German nation and thence took its way abroad, is everywhere unmistakable ; and it can be proved that everything which is still worthy of honour among the Germans has arisen in its midst. 85. In what spirit did this German burgher class bring forth and enjoy this period of bloom ? In the spirit of piety, of honour, of modesty, and of the sense of community. For themselves they needed little ; for public enterprises they set no limits to their expen diture. Seldom does the name of an individual stand out or distinguish itself, for they were all of like mind and alike in sacrifice for the common weal. Under precisely the same external conditions as in Germany, free cities had arisen in Italy also. Compare the his tories of both ; contrast the continual disorders, the io6 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION internal conflicts, nay, even wars, the constant change of constitutions and rulers in the latter with the peaceful unity and concord in the former. How could it be more clearly demonstrated that there must have been an inward difference in the dispositions of the two nations ? The German nation is the only one among the neo- European nations that has shown in practice, by the example of its burgher class for centuries, that it is capable of enduring a republican ^aastitution. >f . 86. Of the separate and special means of once more raising the German spirit a very powerful one would be in our hands if we had a soul-stirring history of the Germans in that period one that would become a book for the nation and for the people, just as the Bible and the hymn-book are now, until the time came when we ourselves had again achieved something worthy of record. But such a history should not set forth deeds and events after the fashion of a chronicle ; it should transport us by its fascinating power, without any effort or clear con sciousness on our part, into the very midst of the life of that time, so that we ourselves should seem to be walking and standing and deciding and acting with them. This it should do, not by means of childish and trumpery fabrications, as so many historical novels have done, but by the truth ; and it should make those deeds and events visible manifestations of the life of that time. Such a work, indeed, could only be the fruit of extensive know ledge and of investigations that have, perhaps, never yet been made ; but the author should spare us the exhibi tion of this knowledge and these investigations, and simply lay the ripened fruit before us in the language of the present day and in a manner that every German without exception could understand. In addition to this historical knowledge, such a work would demand a high degree of GERMAN CHARACTERISTICS 107 philosophical spirit, which should display itself just as little, and above all things a faithful and loving disposition. 87. That age was the nation s youthful dream, within a narrow sphere, of its future deeds and conflicts and victories, and the prophecy of what it would be once it had perfected its strength. Evil associations and the seductive power of vanity have swept the growing nation into spheres which are not its own ; and, because it there sought glory too, it stands to-day covered with shame and fighting for its very life. But has it indeed grown old and feeble ? Has not the well of original life con tinued to flow for it, as for no other nation, since then and until to-day ? Can those prophecies of its youthful life, which are confirmed by the condition of other nations and by the plan of civilization for all humanity-f can they remain unfulfilled ? Impossible ! O, tbt. someone would bring back this nation from its false path, and in the mirror of its youthful dreams show it its true disposition and its true vocation ! There let it stand and ponder, until it develops the power to take up its vocation with a mighty hand. May this challenge be of some avail in bringing out right soon a German nan equipped to perform this preliminary task ! SEVENTH ADDRESS A CLOSER STUDY OF THE ORIGINALITY AND CHARACTERISTICS OF A PEOPLE 88. IN the preceding addresses we have indicated and proved from history the characteristics of the Germans J is an original people, and as a people that has the right tb call itself simply the people, in contrast to other ^anches that have been torn away from it ; for, indeed, Je word " deutsch " in its real signification denotes vt.at we have just said. It will be in accordance with our purpose if we devote another hour to this subject and deal with a possible objection, viz., that if this is something peculiarly German one must confess that at .the present time there is butjdttlej^ftjhat is German among the Germans themselves. As we are quite unable to deny that this appears to be so, but rather intend to acknowledge it and to take a complete view of it in its separate parts, we propose to give an explana tion of it at the outset. 89. We have seen that the relationship in which the original people of the modern world stood to the progress of modern culture was as follows : the former received from the incomplete, and never more than superficial, efforts of foreign countries the first stimulus to more profound creative acts, which were to be developed from its own midst. As it undoubtedly takes time for the 108 CLOSER STUDY OF CHARACTERISTICS 109 stimulus to result in a creative act, it is plain that such a relationship will bring about periods of time in which the original people must seem to be almost entirely amalgamated with foreign peoples and similar to them, because it is then being stimulated only, and the creative act which is to be the result has not yet forced its way through. It is in such a period of tirnejthat Qermany ( finds itself ajyie_rSnt-^^ in regard to trie great \ majority of its educated inhabitants ; and that is the^ reason for those manifestations of a love of everything foreign which are a part of the very inner soul and life of this majority. , In the preceding address we saw that the means by which foreign countries stimulate their motherland at the present time is philosophy, which we I f define d as free-thinking released from all fetters of belief I A in external authority. Now, when this stimulus has not resulted in a new creative act and it will result thus in extremely few cases, for the great majority have no con ception of what creation means the following effects are observable. For one thing, that foreign philosophy which we have already described changes its own form again and again. Another thing is that its spirit usurps the mastery over the other sciences whose borders are contiguous with philosophy, and regards them from its own ^oint of view. Finally, since the German after all can never entirely lay aside his seriousness and its direct influence on life, this philosophy influences the habits of public life and the principles and rules that govern it. We shall substantiate these assertions step by step. 90. First of all and before all things : man does not form his scientific view in a particular way voluntarily and arbitrarily, but.it is^-Qr^edJqr him by his life, and is in reality the inner, and to him unknown, root oL his ownjife, wEich has become his way of looking at _tlimgs7 no ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION It is what you really are in your inmost soul that stands forth to your outward eye, and you would never be able to see anything else. If ypjii_aj^-4ux_se^.difFerently, you must first of all becomejiiflfirent. Now, the inner essence of non r German ways, or of non-originaliffi t is the belief in something that is__final, fixed, and settled beyond the possibility of change, the belief in a border-line, on the hither side of which free life may disport itself, but which it is never able to break through and dissolve by its own power, and which it can never make part of itself. This impenetrable border-line is, therefore, inevitably present to the eyes of foreigners at some place or other, and it is impossible for them to think or believe except with such a border-line as a presupposition, unless their whole nature is to be transformed and their heart torn out of their body. Thgy ine_vitably_believe in jeath as Alpha and Omega, the ultimate source of all things and, therefore, of life itself. 91. Our first task here is to show how this fundamental belief of foreigners expresses itself among Germans at the present time. It expresses itself first of all in their own philosophy. German philosophy of the present day, in so far as it is worthy of mention here, strives for thoroughness and scientific form, regardless of the fact that those things are beyond its reach ; it strives for unity, and that also not without the example of foreign countries in former times ; it strives for reality and essence not for mere appearance, but to find for this appearance a foundation appearing in appearance. In all these points it is right, and far surpasses the philosophies prevailing in foreign countries at the present day ; for German philosophy in its love of everything foreign is far more thorough and _more consistent than the foreign countries themselves. CLOSER STUDY OF CHARACTERISTICS in Now this foundation, which is to be the basis of mere appearance, is for those philosophies, however much more incorrectly they may fur trier define it, alwaj^s which is just what it is and nothing more, chained in itself aftd-baunji_jQj^ De^th, therefore, and alienation from originality, winch are within them, stand forth before their eyes as well. Because they them selves are unable by any effort to rise out of themselves to life as such, but always need a prop and a support for their free upward flight, they do not get beyond this support in their thinking, which is the image of their life, That which is not Something is to them inevitably s Notfiing, "for their eyes see nothing else" ..... ^between that / Being in which growth has ceased and the Nothing, J because their life has nothing else. Their feeling, which is their sole possible authority, seems to them infallible. If anyone does not acknowledge this support of theirs, they are far from assuming that to him life alone is enough ; on the contrary, they believe that he merely lacks the cleverness to perceive the support, which they have no doubt supports him too, and the capacity to raise himself by his exertions to their high point of view. It is, therefore, futile and impossible to instruct them ; one would have to construct them, and to construct them differently, if one could. Now, in j this matter German philosophy of the present day is j not German, but a product of the foreign spirit. 92. True philosophy, on the other hand, which has been perfected in itself and has penetrated beyond I appearance to the very kernel of appearance, proceeds [ from the one,jpure, divine life life simply as such, which it remains for all eternity, and always one but not from this or that kind of life. It sees how it is only irTappear- ance that this life ceaselessly closes and opens again, ii2 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION nd how it is only in accordance with this law that life attains Being and becomes a Something. In the view of /this philosophy, Being arises, whereas the other presup- |oses_Jt. So, then, this philosophy is in a very special sense German only that is, original. Vice versa, if anyone were but a true German, he could not philoso phize in any way but this. 93. That system of thought, although it dominates the / majority of those who philosophize in German, is never- theless not really a German system. Yet, whether it is consciously set up as a true system of philosophical doctrine, or whether, unknown to us, it is merely the basis for the rest of our thinking, it influences the other scientific , views of the age. Indeed, jt is a main effort of our age, stimulated by foreign countries as we are, not merely to lay hold of the material of science with the memory, as our forefathers may be said to have done, but to turn it over_in ou^ own_indeenden^ thought and to philosophize uj)on_it. So farjas the effort is concerned, our age is in the ..right ; but. when, iiLthe execution of this.^hilosophiz- ing, it proceeds, as is to be expected, from the death- creed .of foreign philosophy, it will be in the wrong. In this place we propose to glance only at those sciences which are most closely connected with our whole plan, and to trace the foreign ideas and views which are so widespread in them. 94. In holding that the establishment and government of States should be looked upon as an indepejadeiit art having its_own fixed rules, non-German countries have undoubt edly .sermdjujs^sJiQrerunners, and they themselves found their pattern in antiquity. But what will be regarded as tfye art of-fehe-State bjf_such a non^Geiman country, which in its language, the very element of its thinking and willing, has a support that is fixed, closed, and dead ? CLOSER STUDY OF CHARACTERISTICS 115 What, too, will all who follow its example regard as the art of the State ? Undoubtedly it will be the art of finding v7 a similarly fixed and dead order of things, from which \\ condition of death the living movement of society is ta proceed, and to proceed as this art intends. This inten-7 / tion is to make the whole of life in society into a large I / and ingeniously constructed clockwork, pressure-machine, \ />. in which every single part will be continually compelled X by the wffoIe~To~~serYe-^^ The -intention is to/J do a sum in arithmetic with finite and given quantities, and produce from them an ascertainable result ; and thus, on the assumption that everyone seeks his own well-being,*^ to compel everyone against his wish and will to promote j the general well-being. Non-German countries have re- " peatedly enunciated this principle and produced ingenious specimens of this art of social machinery. The mother- \ land has adopted the theory, and developed its application in the construction of social machines ; and here, too, as always, in a manner that is deeper, truer, more thorough going, and much. .superior to its models. If at any time there is a stoppage in the accustomed process of society, such artists of the State can give no other explanation than that perhaps one of the wheels has become worn out, and they know no other remedy than to remove the defective wheels and insert new ones. The more deeply rooted anyone is in this mechanical view of society, and the better he understands how to simplify the mechanism by making all the parts of the machine as alike as possible and by treating them all as if they were of the same material, the higher is his reputation as an artist of the State in this age of ours : and rightly so, for things are even worse when those in control hesitate and come to no decision and are incapable of any definite opinion. 8 ii2 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION ; 95. This view of the art of the State enforces respect by its iron consistency and by an appearance of sublimity which falls upon it ; and up to a certain point, especially when the whole tendency is towards a monarchical con stitution, and one that is always becoming more purely monarchical, it renders good service. But^ when it reaches that point, its_impotence is apparent to everyone. I will suppose that you have made your machine as perfect as you intended, and that each and every lower part of it is unceasingly and irresistibly compelled by a higher part, which is itself compelled to compel, and so on up to the top. But how will your final J>art, from which proceeds the whole compelling power present in the machine, be itself compelled to__coinjgel ? Suppose you have overcome absolutely all the resistance to the main spring that might arise from the friction of the various parts, and suppose you have given that mainspring a power against which all other power vanishes to nothing, which is all you could do even by mechanism, and suppose you have thus created a supremely powerful monarchical constitution ; how are you going to set this mainspring itself in motion and compel it without exception to see it ? Tell me how you are going to bring perpetual motion into your clockwork, which, though properly designed and constructed, does not go. Is, perhaps, as you sometimes say in your embarrassment, the whole machine itself to react ancl to set its own main- ^pring in motion ? Either this happens by a power that itself proceeds from the stimulus of the mainspring ; or /else it happens by a power that does not proceed thence, but is to be found in the whole thing independent of the mainspring. No third way is possible. If you suppose the first, you find yourselves reasoning in a circle, and your principles of mechanics are in a .circle too ; the CLOSER STUDY OF CHARACTERISTICS 115 whole machine can compel the mainspring only in so far as the machine itself is compelled by the mainspring to compel it that is to say, in so far as the mainspring only indirectly compels itself. But if it does not compel itself, and this is the defect we set out to remedy, no motion whatever results. If you suppose the second case, you confess that the source of all motion in your machine is a power that has not entered at all into your calcula tions and regulations, and is not in any way controlled by your mechanism. This power undoubtedly works as it can without your aid and according to its own laws, which are unknown to you. In each of the two cases, you must confess yourselves botchers and impotent boasters. 96. Now, people-have felt .this, and so they have wished,^ under this system which, in its reliance upon compulsion, j need not-concern itself about the other citizens, to educate \ Sit any rate the prince by every kind of good doctrine and ) instruction ; for from the prince the whole movement , of societyj^iooeeds. But how can one be sure of finding someone who by nature is capable of receiving the educa tion that~U to make a prince ? Even if by a stroke of luck he were to be found, how can one be sure that he, whom no man can compel, will be ready and willing to submit to discipline ? Such a view of the art of the State, whether it is found on ibreigrTor German soil, is always a product of the foreign spirit. Here we may remark^tq the ho^nourjof the German race and the German spirit, that, however good artists we might be in the mere theory of these calculations which are based on compul sion, none the less, when it came to putting them into practice, we were very much hampered by the dim feeling that things_ should not be done in this way ; and N so in this matter \ve remained behind foreign countries. ) u6 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION Therefore, even should we be compelled to accept the boon of foreign forms and laws intended for us, at least let us not be unduly ashamed, as if our intelligence had been incapable of attaining these heights of legislation. As we are not inferior to any nation even in legislating, when we only have the pen in our hands, it may well be that we felt with regard to life that even the making of such laws was not the right thing ; and so we preferred to let the old system stand until the perfect system should come to us, instead of merely exchanging the old fashion for a new one just as transitory. 97. Altogether different is the genuine German art of the State. It, too, seeks fixity, surety, and independence of blind and halting nature, and in this it is quite in agree- j ment with foreign countries. But, unlike these, it does i not seek a fixed and certain thing, as the first element, j which will make the spirit, as the second element, certain ; on the contrary, it seeks from the very beginning, and as the very first and only element, a firm and certain spirit. This is for it the mainspring, whose life i proceeds from itself, and which has perpetual motion ; \ the mainspring which will regulate, and continually ^tkeep in motion, the life of society. The German art of *-Uthe State understands that it cannot create this spirit ] jby reprimanding adults who are already spoilt by neglect, i but only by educating the young, who are still unspoilt.y Moreover, with this education it will not turn, as foreign countries do, to the solitary peak, the prince, but to the broad plain which is the nation ; for indeed the prince, too, will without doubt be part of the nation. Just as | the State, in the persons of its adult citizens, is the con- [ tinued education of the human race, so must the future citizen himself, in the opinion of this art of the State, Vfirst be educated up to the point of being susceptible to CLOSER STUDY OF CHARACTERISTICS 117 that higher education. So this German and very modern art of the State becomes once more the very ancient art of the State, whicja^amcaigv^ citizenship on education and trained such citizens as succeeding ages have never seen. Henceforth the German will do what is in form the same, though in content it will be characterized by a spirit that is not narrow and; exclusive, but universal and cosmopolitan. 98. That foreign__spirit to which we have referred prevails among the great majority of our people in another matter, ~viz7r~their view of the whole life of a human race and of history as the picture of that life. A nation whose Lmguage has^a^dead and completed foundation can only advance, as we showed on a previous occasion, to a certainjrtage of development in all the departments of rhetoric. That stage depends on the foundation of the language, and the nation will experience a golden age. Unless such a nation is extremely modest and self-depreci- ative, it cannot fittingly think more highly of the whole race than it does of itself, from its own knowledge ; hence, it must assume that there will be a final, highest, and for ever unsurpassable goal for all human develop ment. Just as those animal species, the beavers and the bees, still build in the way they built thousands of years ago, and have made no progress in the art during that long period of time, so it will be, according to that nation, with the animal species called man in all branches of his development. These branches, impulses, and capaci ties it will be possible to survey exhaustively, and indeed to see on examining a few members ; and then it will be possible to indicate the highest development of each one of them. Perhaps the human species will be far worse off than the bee or beaver species ; for, though the latter learn nothing new, they nevertheless do not deteriorate u8 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION in their art, whereas man, when he has once reached the summit, is hurled back again, and may struggle for hundreds or thousands of years to regain the point at which it would have been better to leave him undis turbed. The human species, so these people think, will undoubtedly have attained such culminating points in education in the past, and enjoyed more than one golden age ; to discover these points in history, to judge all the efforts of humanity by them, and to lead humanity back to them, will be their most strenuous endeavour. ^ ; According to them, history was finished long ago and has / been finished several times already. According to them, there is nothing new under the sun, for they have destroyed - the source of eternal life under and over the sun, and only let eternally-recurring death repeat itself and subside time after time. 99. It is_well known that this philosophy of history has come to us from "foreign, countries, although it is dying away even there at the present day and has become almost exclusively German property. From this closer rkinship it follows also that this philosophy of history, which / we call ours, is able to understand the efforts of foreign ( countries through and through ; and, although this view of history is no longer expressed very often in those countries, they go beyond expression, for they are acting in accordance with it and constructing once more a golden age. This philosophy is even able to prophesy, ^nd to point out to them the path they have still to take ; jit can pay them the tribute of genuine admiration, Which one who thinks as a German cannot pretend to do. jlndeed, how could he ? Golden ages are to him in every respect a limitation proceeding from a state of death. Gold may indeed be the most precious metal in the lap of dead earth, he thinks, but the stuff of the living spirit CLOSER STUDY OF CHARACTERISTICS 119 is beyond the sun and beyond all suns, and is their source. ^ For him history, and with it the human race, does not I unfold itself according to some mysterious hidden law, I like a round dance ; on the contrary, in his opinion a ff true and proper man himself makes history, not merely | repeating what has existed already, but throughout all H time creating what is entirely new. Hence, he never J expects mere repetition, and even if it should happen word for word as the old book says, at any rate he does not admire it. 100. Now, the deadly foreign spirit, without our being I clearly aware of it, spreads itself in a similar way over the,/ rest of our scientific views, of which it may suffice to have adduced the examples quoted. This happens because at the present day we are working in our own fashion upon stimuli previously received from abroad, and are passing through that intermediate state. Because it was pertinent to the matter in hand, I adduced those examples ; and partly, too, so that no one should think himself able to refute the statements here made by de ductions from the principles which we have quoted. .It is not the case that those principles would have remained unknown to us, or that we could not ourselves have risen to their high level ; far from it. On the contrary, we know them quite well, and might perhaps, if we had time to spare, be capable of developing them backwards and forwards in their complete logical sequence. Only we reject them right from the very beginning and also all their consequences, of which there are more in our tradi tional way of thinking than the superficial observer may find it easy to believe. This foreign spirit influences not only our scientific:^ view of things, but also, and in the same way, our ordinary , life and the rules that govern it. But, in order to make/ 120 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION this clear, and to make what has been said still clearer, it is necessary first of all to scrutinize more keenly the essence of original life^ or freedom. 101. Freedom, taken in the sense of indecisive hesita tion between several courses equally possible, is not life, but only the forecourt and portal to real life. At some time or other there must be an end of this hesitation and an advance to decision and action ; and only then does life begin. Now, at first sight, and when viewed directly, every decision of the will appears as something primary, and in no wise as something secondary, or as the effect of a primary thing which is its cause. It appears to be something existing simply by itself, and existing just as it is. This f meaning we wish to establish as the sole possible sensible I meaning of the word freedom. But, with regard to the inner content of such a decision of the will, there are two cases possible, viz., on the one hand, there appears in it only appearance, separated from essence and without essence entering into its appearance in any way ; on the other hand, essence enters in appearance into this appear ance of a decision of the will. In this connection it jmust be remarked at once that essence can become apparent only in a decision of the will, and in nothing else whatever, although, on the other hand, there may be decisions of the will in which essence does not manifest itself at all, but only mere appearance. We proceed to discuss the latter case first. 1 02. By its separation from, and its opposition to, essence, as well as by the fact that it is itself capable of appearing and presenting itself, mere appearance simply as such is unaljeFafcljL^deler mined, and it is, therefore, inevitably just what it is and turns out to be. Hence, if any given decision of the will is, as we assume, in its CLOSER STUDY OF CHARACTERISTICS 121 content mere appearance, it is to that extent, not in fact free, primary, and original, but it is a result of necessity, and is a secondary element proceeding just as it is from a higher primary element, viz., the general law of appear ance. Now, the thinking of man, as we have mentioned several times already, represents man to himself just as he actually is, and always remains the true copy and mirror of his inner being. For this reason, although such a decision of the will appears at first sight to be free, just because it is called a decision of the will, yet it cannot appear so at all to deeper and prolonged thinking ; on the contrary, the latter must think that it is a result of necessity, which, of course, it actually is in fact. For those people, whose will has never yet raised itself to a higher sphere than the one in which it is held that a will merely appears in them, the belief in freedom is, of course, a delusion and a deception, proceeding from a view that is casual and does not go beneath the surface. For them there is truth only in thought thought that shows them everywhere only the chain of strict necessity. 103. The first and fundamental law of appearance, simply as such, (we are entitled to refrain from stating the reason, all the more so because it has been sufficiently given elsewhere) is this : that it falls into a manifoldness, which, in a certain respect, is an endless whole and, in a certain other respect, a whole complete in itself. In this completed whole of manifoldness every single part is determined by all the rest, and, again, all the rest are determined by this single part. Hence, if in the decision of the will of the individual there emerges into appearance nothing but the possibility of appearance and of repre sentation, and visibility in general, which is in fact the visibility of nothing, then the content of such a decision of the will is determined by the completed whole of all 122 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION the possible will-decisions of this will and of all the other possible individual wills ; and it. contains, and can con tain, nothing more than that which remains to be willed after all those possible decisions of the will have been | abstracted. Hence, there is in fact nothing independent, I original, and individual in it ; on the contrary, it is merely .secondary, the consequence of the general connection of [the sum of appearance in its separate parts. Indeed, it has always been recognized as such by all who, though on this level of culture, were capable of profound thought, and their recognition of it has been expressed in the same words as those of which we have just made use. But all I this is the result of the fact that in them not essence, but J merely appearance, enters into appearaHceC" 104. On the other hand, where essence_ rtself enters into the appearance of a decision of the. will directly and, so to speak, in its own person and not by any representa tive, then all that has been mentioned above is likewise present, following as it does from appearance as a com- pleted whole, for appearance appears here also. But an appearance of this kind does not consist merely of this sum of its component parts a nor is it exhausted ky-that sum ; on the contrary, there is in it something more, another component part which is not to be explained by that connection, but remains over after what is explicable has been abstracted. That first component part is present here too, I said; that something more becomes visible, and, by means of this visibility, but not at all by means, of its inner essence, it comes under the general law~and the conditions of visibleness. But it is still more than this , something, which proceeds from some law or other and which, therefore, is a secondary thing and the result of necessity ; and, in respect of this more, it is of itself what it is, a truly primary, original, and free thing. Since it CLOSER STUDY OF CHARACTERISTICS 123 is this, it also appears thus to that thought which is deepest and which has found completion in itself. The highest law of visibleness is, as we have said, this : that the thing) appearing splits itself into an infinite manifoldness. This l 6 more becomes visible, on every occasion, as more than what proceeds at any particular moment from the sum total of appearance, and so on into infinity ; hence, this more itself appears infinite. But it is as clear as noonday that it acquires this infinity only because it is on each occasion visible and thinkable, and that it is to be discovered only by its contrast to what follows eternally from the sum total, and by its being more than this. But, apart from this ned of thinking it, it exists, this more than everything infinite, which has the power of presenting itself eternally ; this more, I say, exists in pure simplicity and invariability from the very beginning, and in all infinity it does not become more than this more, nor does it become less. Nothing but its visibleness as more than the infinite and in no other way can it become visible in its highest purity creates the infinite and all that appears to appear in it. Now, where this more actually enters as such a visible more but it can only enter in an act of will- there essence itself, which alone exists and alone can exist, and which exists of itself and by itself, divine essence enters into appearance a-fteLmakes itself directly visible ; and ini that place there exists, for that very reason, true originality and freedom, and so there is also a belief in them. 105. So, to tl^g general question whether man is free or not, there is no generaTanswer"7~foT7 "juTrtecauselhan is free" in the lower sense, because he begins in indecisive vacillation and hesitation, he may be free, or he may not be free, in the higher sense of the word. In reality, the way in which anyone answers this question is the clear mirror of his true inward being. He who is in fact no 124 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION more than a link in the chain of appearances may, perhaps, for a moment be under the delusion that he is free ; but this delusion cannot hold its ground when he thinks more strictly. Of necessity he thinks that all his fellows are in the condition in which he finds himself. On the other hand, he, whose life is p^ggs se dby the truth and has becom^Jife direct fi^m__Go3^TIIfree__and _ believes in freedom in himsel_nd^Dthers^_ 1 66. He "whcTbelieves in a fixed, rigid, and dead state of being believes in it only because he is dead in himself ; and, once he is dead, he cannot do anything but believe thus, so soon as ever he becomes clear in himself. He himself, with all his kind from beginning to end, becomes something secondary and a necessary consequence of some presupposed primary element. This presupposition is his actual thinking, and by no means a merely fancied thinking ; it is his true mind, the point at which his thinking is itself directly life. Thus it is the source of all the rest of his thinking, and of his judgment of his kind in its past, which is history, in its future, which is his expectations for it, and in its present, which is actual life in himself and others. This belief in death, as contrasted with an original and living people, we have called-the foreign spir.it. When once this foreign spirit is present among Germans it will, therefore, reveal itself in their actual life also, as quiet resignation to what they deem the unalterable necessity of their existence, as the abandonment of all hope of improvement of ourselves or others by means of freedom, 1 as a disposition to make use of themselves and everyone else just as they are, and to derive from their existence the greatest possible advantage for ourselves ; in short, it will reveal itself as the confession, eternally reflecting itself in every stirring of life, of a belief in the universal and CLOSER STUDY OF CHARACTERISTICS 12? equal sinfulness of all. This belief I have sufficiently described in another place ; 1 I leave you to read this description for yourselves and to decide how far it fits the present time. This way of thinking and acting arises from the state of inward death, as has often been mentioned, only when that state becomes clear about itself. On the other hand, so long as that^stateremains in darknesSjjtj^l^ in free^m^_whicri belief is in ijtself true, and is only aUelusion when it is applied to existence in such a state of mind. Here we see clearly and distinctly the disadvantage of clearness when the soul is base. So long as this baseness remains in darkness, it is continually disquieted, goaded, and impelled by the unceasing claim to freedom, and it presents a point of attack to the attempts to improve it. But clearness com pletes it and rounds it off in itself ; clearness imparts to this base state of mind a cheerful resignation, the calm of a good conscience, and self-satisfaction. As their^ belief is, so is the result ; from now onwards they are in j fact incapable of improvement ; at the most they serve to keep alive among their betters a pitiless loathing of evil or a resignation to the will of God ; but, apart from that, they are not of the least use in the world. 107. So, let there appear before you at last in complete clearness what we havejneant by Germans, as we have so far described them. The true criterion is this : do you believe in something absolutely primary and original in man himself, in freedom, in endless improvement, in the eternal progress of our race, or do you not believe in all this, but ratEer imagine that you clearly perceive and comprehend that the opposite of all this takes place ? All who either are themselves alive and creative and 1 [Fichte adds this note here : see the Guide to the Blessed Life, Lecture II.] ,26 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION productive of new things, or who, should this not have | fallen to their lot, at any rate definitely abandon the things of ^ naught and stand on the watch for the stream of original life to lay hold of them somewhere, or who, should they not even be so far advanced as this, at least (have an inkling of freedom and do not hate it or take fright at it, but on the contrary love it all these are joriginal^men ; they are, when considered as a people, 11 gngmaT people, the peoglejir^^gpT^an^^ All Wh r ^*gn "d^selves to being "something secondary and derivative, ariffwBo "Histmctly know and comprehend that they are such, are so in fact, and become ever more so because of this belief of theirs ; (they are an appendix to the lif ejyjiich bestirred itself of its own accord before them or beside them ; they are an echo resounding from the rock, an echo of a voice already silent ; jhey are, con sidered as a people, outside the original people, and to the latter they are ^strangers and foreigners. In_the nation I which to this very day calls itself simgl^y^ people, or I Gqinians, originality has broken forth into the light of day in modern times, at any rate up to now, and the power of creating new things has shown itself. Now, at last, by a philosophy that has become clear in itself, the mirror is being held up to this nation, in which it may recognize and form _a clear conception of that which it hitherto becaTnjby_jiature without being distinctly Eonscious of it, and to which it is called by nature ; and proposal is being made to this nation to make itself /holly and completely what it ought to be, to do this according to that clear conception and with free, and deliberate art, to renew the alliance, and to close its circle. The principle according to which it has to close its circle is laid before it : whoever believes in spirituality and in the freedom of this spirituality, and who wills CLOSER STUDY OF CHARACTERISTICS 127 >-~Ov the eternal development of this spirituality by freedom, \ \ wherever he may have been born and whatever language \Y J he speaks, is of our blood ; he is one of us, and will come over to our side. Whoever _ believes in stagnation, } retrogression, and the round dance of which weTTpok^ , or who sets a deacl "nature at the helm of the world s government, wherever he may have been born and what ever language he speaks, is-jion-German and a stranger to usj_and it is to be wished that he would separate himself from us completely, and the sooner the better. 108. So, too, at this point let there appear before you at last, and unmistakably, what that philosophy, which with good reason calls itselfthe German philosophy, really wants, and wherein it is strictly, earnestly, and inexorably opposed to any foreign philosophy that believes in death. The German philosophy has as its support \ what we jsajd above about_ freedom j and he that still hath ears to hear, let him hear. Let it appear before you, not in the least with the intention of making the dead understand it, which is impossible, but so that it may be harder for the dead to twist its words, and to make out that they themselves want more or less the same thing and at bottom are of the same mind. This German ] philosophy does, indeed, raise itself by the act of thinking i not merely boasting about it, in accordance with a dim notion that it ought to be so, without being able to put it into practice it raises itself to the more than all infinity that is unchangeable, and in this alone it finds true being. It perceives time and eternity and infinity in their! rise from the appearing and becoming visible of that One which is in itself invisible and which is only comprehended, rightly comprehended, in this invisibility. Even infinity is, according to this philosophy, nothing in itself, and there is in it no true being whatever. It is solely the means 128 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION by which the One thing that exists, and exists only in its invisibility, becomes visible, and the means by which there is built up for the One an image, a form, and a shadow of itself in the sphere of imagery. Everything else that may become visible within this infinity of the world of images is a nothing proceeding from nothing, a shadow of the shadow, and solely the means by which that first nothing of infinity and time itself becomes visible and opens up to thought the ascent to invisible being without image. Within this, the sole possible image of infinity, the invisible directly manifests itself only as free and original life of the sight, or as a decision of the will made by a reasonable being ; in no other way whatever can it appear and manifest itself. All continuous existence that appears as non-spiritual life is only an empty shadow projected from the world of sight and enlarged by the intermediary of the nothing a shadow, in contrast to which, and by recognizing it as a nothing enlarged by transmission, the world of sight itself ought to elevate itself to the recognition of its own nothingness and to the acknow ledgment of the invisible as the only thing that is true. 109. Now, in these shadows of the shadows of shadows that philosophy of being, which believes in death and becomes a mere philosophy of nature, the deadest of all philosophies, remains a captive, and dreads and worships its own creature. This constancy is the expression of its true life and of its love ; and herein this philosophy is to be believed. But, when it goes on to say that this being, which it presupposes as actually existing, is one with, and precisely the same as, the Absolute, it is not to be believed, no matter how often it asserts this, nor even though it takes many an oath in confirmation. It does not know this, but only CLOSER STUDY OF CHARACTERISTICS 129 utters it trusting to luck, and blindly echoing another philosophy whose tenet in this matter it does not venture to dispute. If it should want to make good its claim to knowledge, it would have to proceed, not from duality as an undisputed fact (which its dictum, against which there is no appeal, does away with only to leave in full sway) but, on the contrary, from unity. From this unity it would have to be capable of deducing duality, and with it all manifoldness, in a clear and intelligible fashion. For this, however, thought is needed, and reflection consummated and perfected in itself. The philosophy we are referring to has, for one thing, never learnt the art of thinking in this way and is indeed incapable of it, having only the power to indulge in reverie. Besides, it is hostile to this way of thinking and has no inclination whatever to attempt it ; for, if it did, it would be dis turbed in the illusion that it holds so dear. This, then, is the essential thing in which our philo sophy deliberately opposes that philosophy ; and on this occasion it has been our purpose, once for all, to enunciate and establish this as definitely as possible. EIGHTH ADDRESS WHAT IS A PEOPLE IN THE HIGHER MEANING OF THE WORD, AND WHAT IS LOVE OF FATHERLAND ? 1 10. THE last four addresses have answered the question : What is the German as contrasted with other peoples of Teutonic descent ? The proof to be adduced by all this for our investigation as a whole is completed when we examine the further question : What is a people ? This latter question is similar to another, and when it is answered the other is answered too. The other question, which is. often raised and the answers to which are very different/ is this : What is love of fatherland, or, to express it more correctly, what is the love of the individual for his nation ? If we have hitherto proceeded correctly in the course of our investigation, it must here be obvious at once that only the German the original man, who has not become dead in an arbitrary organization really has a people and is entitled to count on one, and that he alone is capable of real and rational love for his nation. The problem having been thus stated, we prepare the way for its solution by the following observation, which seems at first to have no connection with what has pre ceded it. in. Religion, as we have already remarked in our third address, is able to transcend all time and the whole of this present sensuous life, without thereby causing the 130 PEOPLE AND LOVE OF FATHERLAND 131 slightest detriment to the righteousness, morality, and holiness of the life that is permeated by this belief. Even if one is firmly persuaded that all our effort on this earth will not leave the slightest trace behind it nor yield the slightest fruit, nay more, that the divine effort will even be perverted and become an instrument of evil and of still deeper moral corruption, one can none the less continue the effort, solely in order to maintain the divine life that has manifested itself in us, and with a view to a higher order of things in a future world, inV which no deed that is of divine origin is lost. Thus the apostles, for example, and the primitive Christians in general, because of their belief in heaven had their hearts entirely set on things above the earth even in their lifetime ; and earthly affairs the State, their earthly fatherland, and nation were abandoned by them so entirely that they no longer deemed them worthy of attention. Possible though this is, and to faith not difficult, and joyfully though one must resign one s self, once it is the unalterable will of God, to having an earthly fatherland no longer and to being serfs and exiles here below, nevertheless it is not the _ _ rule of tri^universe ; on the contrary, it is a rare exception. It is a grosjymsu,sej}f religion, a misuse of which Chris tianity among other religions has frequently been guilty, to make a point of recommending, on principle and without regard to existing circumstances, such a with drawal from the affairs of the State and the nation as the mark of a true religious disposition. In such a con-a dition of things, if it is true and real and not merely the! product of fitful religious zeal, temporal life loses allr ^independent existence and becomes merely a forecourt 1 of true life and a period of severe trial which is endured \ only out of obedience and resignation to the will of God. 1 32 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION Then it is true that immortal souls, as many have imagined, are housed in earthly bodies, as in prisons, for their punish ment. But, on the other hand, in the regular order of things this earthly life itself is intendeJ~Eo^Ee~t ruly life, of which we may be glad and which we may enjoy in gratitude, while, of course, looking forward to a higher life. Although it is true that religion is, for one thing, the consolation of the unjustly oppressed slave, yet this above all is the mark of a religious disposition, viz., to fight against slavery and, as far as possible, to prevent religion from sinking into a mere consolation for captives. No doubt it suits the tyrant well to preach religious resignation and to bid those look to heaven to whom he allows not the smallest place on earth. But we for our part must be in less haste to adopt this view of religion that he recommends ; and we must, if we can, prevent earth from being made into a hell in order to arouse a greater longing for heaven. 112. The natural impulse of man, which should be abandoned only in case of real necessity, is to find heaven on this earth, and to endow his daily work on earth with permanence and eternity ; to plant and to cultivate the eternal in the temporal not merely in an incomprehen- %ible fashion or in a connection with the eternal that seems to mortal eye an impenetrable gulf, but in a fashion \visible to the mortal eye itself. Let me begin with an example that everyone will under stand. What man of noble mind is there who does not earnestly wish to relive his own life in a new and better way in his children and his children s children, and to con tinue to live on this earth, ennobled and perfected in their lives, long after he is dead ? Does he not wish to snatch from the jaws of death the spirt, the mind, and the moral sense by virtue of which, perchance, he was in the days PEOPLE AND LOVE OF FATHERLAND 133 of his life a terror to wrongdoing and corruption, and by which he supported righteousness, aroused men from indolence, and lifted them out of their depression ? Does he not wish to deposit these qualities, as his best legacy to posterity, in the souls of those he leaves behind, so that they too, in their turn, may some day hand them on again, increased and made more beautiful ? What man of noble mind is there who does not want to scatter, by action or thought, a grain of seed for the unending progress in perfection of his race, to fling something new and unprecedented into time, that it may remain there and become the inexhaustible source of new creations ? Does he not wish to pay for his place on this earth and the short span of time allotted to him with something | that even here below will endure for ever, so that he, the individual, although unnamed in history (for the thirst for posthumous fame is contemptible vanity), may yet in his own consciousness and his faith leave behind him unmistakable memories that he, too, was a dweller on the^. earth ? What man of noble mind is there, I said, who does notj^nt this ? But only according to the needs of { noble-minded men is the world to be regarded and j arranged ; as they are, so all men ought to be, and for their sake ajnnp HOPS a world ^ejxjst. They are its kernel, and those of other mind exist only for their sake, being themselves only a part of the transitory world so long as they are of that mind. Such men must conform to^\ the wishes of the noble-minded until they have become^/ like them. 113. Now, what is it that could warrant this challenge and this faith of the noble-minded man in the perman ence and eternity of his work ? Obviously nothing j but an order of things which he can acknowledge as in ( itself eternal and capable of taking up into itself that which : 134 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION is eternal. Such an order of things, however, is the special spintua]_nature_of human environment which, although indeed it is not to be comprehended in any conception, nevertheless truly exists, and from which he himself, with all his thoughts and deeds and with his belief in their eternity, has proceeded the people, from which he is descended and among which he was educated and grew up to be what he now is. For, though it is true beyond dispute that his work, if he rightly claims it to be eternal, is in no wise the mere result of the spiritual law of nature of his nation or absolutely the same thing as this result, / but on the contrary is something more than that and in so far streams forth directly from original and divine life ; f it is, nevertheless, equally true that this something more, immediately on its first embodiment in a visible form, submitted itself to that special spiritual law of nature and found sensuous expression for itself only according to that law. So long as this people exists, every further revelation of the divine will appear and take shape in that people in accordance with the same natural law. But this law itself is further determined by the fact that this man existed and worked as he did, and his influence has become , a permanent part of this law. Hence, everything that follows will be bound to submit itself to, and connect , itself with, that law. So he is sure that the improvement i achieved by him remains in his people so long as the j people itself remains, and that it becomes a permanent i determining factor in the evolution of his people. 114. This, then, is a people in the higher meaning of f the word, when viewed from the standpoint of a spiritual I world : the totality of men continuing to live in society with each other and continually creating themselves / naturally and spiritually out of themselves, a totality I that arises together out of the divine under a certain PEOPLE AND LOVE OF FATHERLAND 135 special law of divine development. It is the subjection in common to this special law that unites this mass in the eternal world, and therefore in the temporal also, to a natural totality permeated by itself . The significance f\ of this law itself can indeed be comprehended as a whole, as we have comprehended it by the instance of the Germans as an original people ; it can even be better understood in many of its further provisions by consider ing the manifestations of such a people ; but it can never be completely grasped by the mind of anyone, for everyone continually remains under its influence unknown to him self, although, in general, it can be clearly seen that such a law exists. This law is a something more of the world of images, that coalesces absolutely in the phenomenal world with the something more of the world of originality that cannot be imaged ; hence, in the phenomenal world neither can be separated again from the other. Thatj law determines entirely and completes what has beenj called the national character of a people that la.w_Qju| ^^ divine". From this it is clear that men who, as is the case with what we have described as the foreign spirit, do not believe at all in something original nor in its continuous development, but j only in an eternal recurrence of apparent life, and who 1 by their belief become what they believe, are in the higher sense not a people at all. As they in fact, properly speaking, do not exist, they are just as little capable of having a national character. 115. The noble-minded man s belief in the eternal continuance of his influence even on this earth is thus founded on the hope of the eternal continuance of the people .from which he has developed, and on the character istic of that people as indicated in the hidden~~law of which we have spoken, without admixture of, or corruption 136 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION by, any alien element which does not belong to the totality of the functions of that law. This characteristic is the eternal thing to which he entrusts the eternity of himself and of his continuing influence, the eternal order of things in which he places his portion of eternity ; he must will its continuance, for it alone is to him the means by which the short span of his life here below is extended - into continuous life here below. His belief and his struggle to plant what is permanent, his conception in which he comprehends his own life as an eternal life, is t]ie_bond which unites first his own nation, and jhen, through , his nation, the whole human race, in a most intimate fashion with himself, and brings all their needs within his widened sympathy until the end of time. This is Qiis love for his people, respecting, trusting, and rejoicing pin it, and feeling honoured by descent from it. The divine has appeared in it, and that which is original has deemed this people worthy to be made its vesture and its means of directly influencing the world ; for this reason there will be further manifestations of the divine Mn it. Hence, the noble-minded man will be active and effective, and will sacrifice himself for hisjDeople. Life merely as such, the mere continuance of changing exis tence, has in any case never had any value for him ; he has wished for it only as the source of what is permanent. But this permanence is promised to him only by the continuous and independent existence of his nation. In order to save his nation he must be ready even to die that it may live(\and that he may live in it the only life for which he has ever wished. 1 1 6. So it is. Love that is truly love, and not a mere transitory lust, never clings to what is transient ; only in the eternal does it awaken and become kindled, and there alone does it rest. Man is not able to love even PEOPLE AND LOVE OF FATHERLAND 137 himself unless he conceives himself as eternal ; apart from that he cannot even respect, much less approve of, him self. Still less can he love anything outside himself^ without taking it up into the eternity of his faith and of I his soul and binding it thereto. He who does not first regard himself as eternal has in him no love of any kind, ] and, moreover, cannot love a fatherland, a thing which for I him does not exist. He who regards his invisible life as eternal, but not his visible life as similarly eternal, may perhaps have a heaven and therein a fatherland, but here below he has no fatherland, for this, too, is regarded only in the image of eternity eternity visible and made sensuous and for this reason also he is unable to love his fatherland. If none has been handed down to such a man, he is to be pitied. But he to whom a fatherland has been handed down, and in whose soul heaven and earth, visible and invisible meet and mingle, and thus, and only thus, create a true and enduring heaven such a man rights to the last drop of his blood to hand on the precious possession unimpaired to his posterity. So it always has been, although it has not always been expressed in such general terms and so clearly as we express it here. What inspired the men of noble mind among the Romans, whose frame of mind and way of thinking still live and breathe among us in their works of art, to struggles and sacrifices, to patience and endurance for the fatherland ? They themselves express it often and distinctly. It was their fir^bjeli^f_jn__the eternal continuance of their Roma, and their confident expecta tion "tEF~Brey r ~3iemselves would eternally continue to live in this eternity in the stream of time. In so far as this belief was well founded, and they themselves would have comprehended it if they had been entirely clear in their own minds, it did not deceive them. To this V 138 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION very day there still lives in our midst what was truly eternal in their eternal Roma ; they themselves live with it, and its consequences will continue to live to the very end of time. "117. People and fatherland in this sense, as a support and guarantee of eternify~~bn earth and as that which can be eternal here below, far transcend the State in the ordinary sense of the word, viz., the social order as compre hended by mere intellectual conception and as established -J-auud maintained under the guidance of this conception. \ The aim of the State is positive law> internal peace, and \ a condition of affairs in which everyone may by diligence earn his daily bread and satisfy the needs of his material existence, so long as God permits him to live. All this is only a means, a condition, and a frajnework for what love of^fatherland really wants^ viz., that the eternal and the divine may blossom in the world^ and never cease to become more and more jmre, perfect, and excellent. I That is why this love of fatherland mustTtself govern the * NState and be the supreme, final, and^absouTte authority./ Its rirsF~exer else of this authority will be to limit the States choice of means to secure its immediate object internal p_eace. To attain this object, the natural freedom of the individual must, of course, be limited in many ways. If the only consideration and intention in regard to individuals were to secure internal peace, it would be well to limit that liberty as much as possible, to bring all their activities under a uniforin^rule, and to keep them under unceasm^ supervision. Even supposing such strictness were unnecessary, it could at any rate do no harm, if this were the sole object. It is only the higher 1 view of the human race and of peoples which extends this narrow calculation. Freedom, including freedom in the ! activities of external life, is the soil in which higher culture PEOPLE AND LOVE OF FATHERLAND germinates ; a legislation which keeps the higher in view will allow T to freedom as wide a field as possible even at the risk of securing a smaller degree of uniform peace and quietness, and of making the work of govern- ment a little harder and more troublesome. 118. To illustrate this by an example. It has happened that nations have been told to their face that they do not need so much freedom as many other nations do. It may even be that the form in which the opinion is expressed is considerate and mild, if what is really meant is that the particular nation would be quite unable to stand so much freedom, and that nothing but extreme severity could prevent its members from destroying each other. But, when the words are taken as meaning what they say, they are true only on the supposition that such a nation is thoroughly incapable of having original life or even the impulse towards it. Such a nation if a nation could exist in which there were not even a few men of noble mind to make an exception to the general rule would in fact need no freedom at all, for this is needed only for the higher purposes that transcend the State. It needs only to be tamed and trained, so that the individuals may live peaceably with each other and that the whole may be made into an efficient instrument for arbitrary purposes in which the nation as such has no part. Whethes this can be said with truth of any nation at all we may leave undecided ; this much is clear, that an original people needs freedom, that this is the security for its continuance as an original people, and that, as it goes on, it is able to stand an ever-increasing degree of freedom without the slightest danger. This is the first matter in respect of which love of fatherland must govern the State itself. 119. Then, too, it must be love of fatherland that 138 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION ve veins the State by placing before it a higher object Chan the usual one of maintaining internal peace, property, personal freedom, and the life and well-being of all. /For this higher object alone, and with no other intention, 1 does the State assemble an armed force. When the ^question arises of making use of this, when the call comes to stake everything that the State, in the narrow concep tion of the word, sets before itself as object, viz., property, personal freedom, life, and well-being, nay, even the continued existence of the State itself ; when the call comes to make an original decision with responsibility to God alone, and without a clear and reasonable idea that what is intended will surely be attained for this is never possible in such matters then, and then only, does there live at the helm of the State a truly original and primary life, and at .this .point, and not before, the true sovereign_rights of government enter, like God, to hazard the lower life for the sake of the higher. In the main tenance of the traditional constitution, the laws, and civil prosperity there is absolutely no real true life and no original decision. Conditions and circumstances, and legislators perhaps long since dead, have created these things ; succeeding ages go on faithfully in the paths marked out, and so in fact they have no public life of their own ; they merely repeat a life that once existed. In such times there is no need of any real government. But, when this regular course is endangered, and it is a question of making decisions in new and unprecedented cases, then there is need of a life that lives of itself. What spirit is it that in such cases- may place itself at the helm, that can make its own decisions with sureness and cer tainty, untroubled by any hesitation ? What spirit, has an undisputed right to summon and to order everyone con cerned, whether he Him self be \vining r ~ornot, and to PEOPLE AND LOVE OF FATHERLAND 141 compel anyone who ..sists, to j^skjsyery thing includiri his life ? Not the spirit of the peaceful citizen s lov for the constitution and the Iaws,f1)u the devouring flame of higher patriotism, which embraces the nation 1 as the vesture of the eternal, for which the noble-minded man joyfully sacrifices himself, and the ignoble man, who only exists for the sake of the other, must likewise. sacri fice himself. It is not that love of the citizen for the constitution ; that love is quite unable to achieve this, so long as it remains on the level of the understanding. Whatever turn events may take, since it pays to govern they will always have a ruler over them. Suppose the new ruler even wants to introduce slavery (and what is slavery if not the disregard for, and suppression of, the character istic of an original people ? but to that way of thinking such qualities do not exist), suppose he wants to introduce slavery. Then, since it is profitable to preserve the life of slaves, to maintain their numbers and even their well- being, slavery under him will turn out to be bearable if he is anything of a calculator. Their life and their keep, at any rate, they will always find. Then what is there left that they should fight for ? After those two things it is peace which they value more than anything. But peace will only be disturbed by the continuance of the struggle. They will, therefore, do anything just to put an end to the fighting, and the sooner the better ; they will submit, they will yield ; and why should they not ? All they have ever been concerned about, and all they have ever hoped from life, has been the continuation of the habit of existing under tolerable conditions. The promise of a life here on earth extending beyond the period of life here on earth that alone it is which can inspire men even unto death for the fatherland. 1 20. So it has been hitherto. Wherever there has /<^,/ 142 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION been true government, wherever bitter struggles have been endured, wherever victory has been won in the face of mighty opposition, there it has been that promise of eternal life which governed and struggled and won the victory. Believing in that promise the German Pro testants, already mentioned in these addresses, entered upon the struggle. Do you think they did not know that peoples could be governed by that old belief too, and held together in law and order, and that under the old belief men could procure a comfortable existence ? Why, then, did their princes decide upon armed resistance, and why did the peoples enthusiastically make such resistance ? It was for heaven and for eternal bliss that they willingly poured out their blood. But what earthly power could have penetrated to the Holy of holies in their souls and rooted out their beliefa belief which had been revealed to them once for all, and on which alone they based their rilope of bliss ? Thus it was not their own bliss for which I they fought ; this was already assured to them ; it was Lthe bliss of their children and of their grandchildren as Lyet unborn and of all posterity as yet unborn. These, too, should be brought up in that same doctrine, which had appeared to them as the only means of salvation. These, too, should partake of the salvation that had dawned for them. This hope alone it was that was threatened by the enemy. For it, for an order of things that long after their death should blossom on their graves, they so joyfully shed their blood. Let us admit that they were not entirely clear in their own minds, that they made mistakes in their choice of words to denote the noblest that was in them, and with their lips did injustice to their souls ; let us willingly confess that their confession of faith was not the sole and exclusive means of becoming a partaker of the heaven beyond the grave ; none the less PEOPLE AND LOVE OF FATHERLAND 143 it is eternally true that more heaven on this side of the grave, a braver and more joyful look from earth upwards, and a freer stirring of the spirit have entered by their sacrifice into the whole life of succeeding ages. To this very day the descendants of their opponents, just as much as we ourselves, their own descendants, enjoy the fruits of their labours. 121. In this belief our earliest common forefathers, the original stock of the new culture, the Germans, as the Romans called them, bravely resisted the on-coming world-dominion of the Romans. Did they not have/ before their eyes the greater brilliance of the Roman provinces next to them and the more refined enjoyments in those provinces, to say nothing of laws and judges seats and lictors axes and rods in superfluity ? Were not the Romans willing enough to let them share in all these blessings ? v In the case of several of their own princes, who did no more than intimate that war against such benefactors of mankind was rebellion, did they not experience proofs of the belauded Roman clemency ? To those who submitted the Romans gave marks of distinction in the form of kingly titles, high commands in their armies, and Roman fillets ; and if they were driven out by their countrymen, did not the Romans provide for them a place of refuge and a means of sub sistence in their colonies ? Had they no appreciation of the advantages of Roman civilization, e.g., of the superior organization of their armies, in which even an Arminius did not disdain to learn the trade of war ? They cannot be charged w r ith ignorance or lack of con sideration of any one of these things. Their descendants, as soon as they could do so without losing their freedom, even assimilated Roman culture, so far as this was possible without losing their individuality. Why, then, did they 144 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION fight for severl_^generatiQiLS-in bloody wars, that broke out again and again with ever renewed force ? A Roman writer puts the following expression into the mouth of their leaders : " What was left for them to do, except to maintain their freedom or else to die before they became slaves." Freedomtothem meant^ just_thjs_:. remaining Germans _and__contmuing to settle their own affairs independently and in accordance with the original spirit of their race, going on with their development in accord ance with the same spirit, ancLpropagating this indepen dence in their posterity. All those blessings which the Romans offered them meant slavery to them, because then they would have to become something that was not German, they would have to become half Roman. They assumed as a matter of course that every man would rather die than become half a Roman, and^that a true German could only want to live in order to be, and to remain, just a German and to bring up his children as Germans! They did not all die ; they did not see slavery ; they bequeathed freedom to their ^children. It is" their unyielding resistance which the whole modern world has to thank for being what it now is. Had the Romans succeeded in bringing them also under the yoke and in destroying them as a nation, which the Roman did in every case, the whole development of the human race would have taken a different course, a course that one cannot think would have been more satisfactory. It is they whom we must thank we, the immediate heirs of their soil, their language, and their way of thinking I for being Germans still, for being still^borne along on the stream of original and independent life. It is they whom we must thank for everything that we have been as a nation since those days, and to them we shall be indebted for everything that we shall be in the future, PEOPLE AND LOVE OF FATHERLAND 145 unless things have come to an end with us now and the last drop of blood inherited from them has dried up in our veins. To them the other branches of the race, whom we now look upon as foreigners, but who by descent from them are our brothers, are indebted for their very existence. When our ancestors triumphed over Roma the eternal, not one of all these peoples was in existence, but the possibility of their existence in the future was won for them in the same fight. 122. These men, and all others of like mind in the^ history of the world, won the victory because eternity jl inspired them, and this inspiration always does, and always u* must, defeat him who is not so inspired. It is neither the ! strong right arm nor the efficient weapon that winsj victories, but only the power of the soul. He who sets a limit to his sacrifices, and has no wish to venture beyond a certain point, ceases to resist as soon as he finds himself in danger at this point, even though it be one which is vital to him and which ought not to be surrendered. He who sets no limit whatever for himself, but on the contrary stakes everything he has, including the most precious possession granted to dwellers here below, namely, life itself, never ceases to resist, and will undoubtedly win the victory over an opponent whose goal is more limited. A people that is capable of firmly beholding the counten ance of that vision from the spiritual world, independence, even though it be only its highest representatives and leaders who are capable of perceiving it a people capable of being possessed by love of this vision, as our earliest forefathers were, will undoubtedly win the victory over a people that is used, as were the Roman armies, only as the tool of foreign ambition to bring independent people under the yoke ; for the former have everything to lose, and the latter merely something to gain. But the way 10 146 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION of thinking which regards war as a game of chance, where the stakes are temporal gain or loss, and which fixes the amount to be staked on the cards even before it begins the game such a way of thinking is defeated even by a whim. Think, for example, of a Mahomet not the Mahomet of history, about whom I confess I have no opinion, but the Mahomet of a well-known French poet. 1 He takes it firmly into his head once for all that he is one of those exceptional beings who are called to lead the obscure and common folk of the earth, and in accordance with this preliminary assumption all his notions, no matter how mean and limited they may be in reality, of necessity seem to him, just because they are his own, great and sub lime ideas full of blessings for mankind ; all who set themselves against these notions seem to him obscure and common people, enemies of their own good, evil-minded, and hateful. Then, in order to justify this conceit of himself as a divine call, he lets this thought absorb his whole life ; he must stake everything on it, and cannot rest until he has trodden underfoot all who refuse to think as highly of him as he does of himself, and until he sees his own belief in his divine mission reflected in the whole contemporary world. I will not say what would happen to him if a spiritual vision, true and clear to itself, entered the lists against him, but he is sure to be victorious over those gamesters with limited stakes, for he stakes everything against them and they do not stake everything. No spirit drives them, but he is driven by a spirit, though it be but a raving one, the violent and powerful spirit of his own conceit. 123. From all this it follows that the State, merely as the government of human life in its progress along the ordinary peaceful path, is not something which is primary 1 [The reference is apparently to Voltaire s tragedy Mahomet.] PEOPLE AND LOVE OF FATHERLAND 147 * and which exists for its_own_sake, but is. merely the means to the higher uose__o_the eternal, regular, and con tinuous development of what is purely human in this nation. It follows, too, that the vision and the love of this eternal development, and nothing else, should have the higher supervision of State administration at all times, not excluding periodToFpeace, and that this alone is able to save the people s independence when it is endangered. In the case of the Germans, among whom as an original people this love of fatherland was possible and, as we firmly believe, did actually exist up to the present time, it has been able up to now to reckon with great confidence on the security of what was most vital to it. As was the case with the ancient Greeks alone, with^jtheJj^mans-jJie_S^tate and the nation were actually separated from each other, and each was represented for / itself, the former in the ^separate German ^realms and principalities, the Ijttej^represejLted^jvisibly^in thejmperial connection aml^nvmbly by virtue of a law, not written, but living and valid in the minds of all, a law whose results struck the eye everywhere in a mass of customs_and institutions. Wherever the German language was ^ spoken, everyone who had first seen the light of day in its domain could consider himself as in a double sense a citizen, on the one hand, of the State where he was born and to whose care he was in the first instance commended, and, on the other hand, of the whole Gomrnpn fatherland of ^ tVi e. Qgrjn EH.. jTajj nr u To everyone it was permitted to seek out for himself in the whole length and breadth of this fatherland the culture most congenial to him or the sphere of action to which his spirit was best adapted ; and talent did not root itself like a tree in the place where it first grew up, but was allowed to seek out its own place. Anyone who, because of the turn taken by 148 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION his own development, became out of harmony with his immediate environment, easily found a willing reception elsewhere, found new friends in place of those he had lost, found time and leisure to make his meaning plainer and perhaps to win over and to reconcile even those who were offended with him, and so to unite the whole. No German-born prince ever took upon himself to mark out for his subjects as their fatherland, with mountains or rivers as boundaries, the territory over which he ruled, and to regard his subjects as bound to the soil. A truth not permitted to find expression in one place might find expression in another, where it might happen that those truths were forbidden which were permitted in the first. So, in spite of the many instances of one- sidedness and narrowness of heart in the separate States, there was nevertheless in Germany, considered as a whole, the greatest freedom of investigation and publication that any people has ever possessed. Everywhere the higher culture was, and continued to be, the result of the inter- Action of the citizens of all German States : and then this higher culture gradually worked its way down in this form to the people at large, which thus never ceased, , broadly speaking, to educate itself by itself. This essential security for the continuance of a German nation was, as we have said, not impaired by any man of German spirit seated at the helm of government ; and though with respect to other original decisions things may not always have happened as the higher German love of fatherland could not but wish, at any rate there has been no act in direct , opposition to its interests; there has been no attempt to undermine that love or to extirpate it and put a love of the opposite kind in its place. 124. But what if the original guidance of that higher culture, as well as of the national power which may not PEOPLE AND LOVE OF FATHERLAND 149 be used except to serve that culture and its continuance, the utilization of German property and blood what if this should pass from the control of the German spirit to that of another ? What would then be the inevitable results ? This is the place where there is special need of the disposition which we invoked in our first address the disposition not to deceive ourselves wilfully about our own affairs, and the courage to be willing to behold the truth and confess it to ourselves. Moreover, it is still permitted to us, so far as I know, to speak to each other in the German language about the fatherland, or at least to sigh over it, and, in my opinion, we should not do well if we anticipated of our own accord such a pro hibition, or if we were ready to restrain our courage, which without doubt will already have taken counsel with itself as to the risk to be run, with the chains forged by the timidity of some individuals. Picture to yourselves, then, the new power, which we are presupposing, as well-disposed and as benevolent as ever you may wish ; make it as good as God Himself ; will you be able to impart to it divine understanding as well ? Even though it wish in all earnestness the greatest happiness and well-being of everyone, do you suppose that the greatest well-being it is able to conceive will be the same thing as German well-being ? In regard to the main point which I have put before you to-day, I hope I have been thoroughly well understood by you ; I hope that several, while they listened to me, thought and felt that I was only expressing in plain words what has always lain in their minds ; I hope that the other Germans who will some day read this will have the same feeling indeed, several Germans have said practically the same thing before I did, and the unconscious basis of 150 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION the resistance tjiat has been repeatedly manifested to a purely mechanical constitution and policy of the State has been the view of things which I have presented to you. Now, I challenge all those who are acquainted with the modern literature of foreign countries to show me one of their poets or legislators who in recent times has ever betrayed a glimmering of anything similar to the view that regards the human race as eternally progressing, and that refers all its activities in this world solely to this eternal progress. Even in the period of their boldest flights of political creation, was there a single one who demanded more from the State than the abolition of inequalities, the maintenance of peace within their borders and of national reputation without, or, in the extremest case, domestic bliss ? If, as we must conclude from all these indications, this is their highest good, they will not attribute to us any higher needs or any higher demands on life. Assuming they always display that beneficent disposition towards us and are free from any selfishness or desire to be greater than we are, they will think they have provided splendidly for us if we are given everything that they themselves know to be desirable. But the thing for which alone the nobler men among us wish to live is then blotted out of public life ; and as soon as the people, which has always shown itself responsive to the stirrings of the noble mind and which we were entitled to hope might be elevated in a body to that nobility, is treated as those to whom we are referring want to be treated, it is degraded and dishonoured, and, by its confluence with a people of a lower species, it is blotted out of the universe. 125. But he, in whom those higher demands on life remain alive and powerful and who has a feeling that their right is divine, feels himself set back, much against PEOPLE AND LOVE OF FATHERLAND 151 his will, into those early days of Christianity, when it was said : " Resist not evil ; but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also ; and if any man will take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also." The latter is well said, for, so long as he sees that thou still hast a cloke, he seeks to pick a quarrel with thee so as to take this from thee also, and only when thou art quite naked wilt thou escape his attention and be left in peace. To such a man the earth becomes a hell and a place of horror, just because of his higher mind, which does him honour. He wishes he had never been born ; he wishes that his eyes may be closed to the light of day, and the sooner the better ; his days are filled with ever lasting sorrow until he descends to the grave, and for those whom he loves he can wish no greater boon than a dull and contented mind, so that with less suffering they may live for an eternal life beyond the grave. These addresses lay before you the sole remaining means, now that the others have been tried in vain, of preventing this annihihl^njDfey^ may break out among us in the future, and of preventing this degradation of our whole nation. They propose that you establish deeply and indelibly in the hearts of all, by means of education, the true and all-powerful love of fatherland, the conception of our people as an eternal people and as the security for our own eternity. What kind of education can do this, and how it is to be done, we shall see in the following addresses. NINTH ADDRESS THE STARTING-POINT THAT ACTUALLY EXISTS FOR THE NEW NATIONAL EDUCATION OF THE GERMANS 126. IN our last address several proofs that had been promised in the first address were given and completed. The present problem, the first task, we said, is simply to preserve the existence and continuance of what is German. All other differences vanished, we said, before the higher point of view, and thereby no harm would happen to the special obligations under which anyone might consider himself to be. If only we keep in mind the distinction that has been drawn between State and nation, it is clear that even in the past it was not possible for their interests ever to come into conflict. Besides, the higher love of fatherland, love for the whole people of the German nation, had to reign supreme, and rightly so, in each particular German State. Not one of them could, indeed, lose sight of this higher interest without alienating everything noble and good, and so hastening its own down fall. The more, therefore, anyone was affected and animated by that higher interest, the better citizen also he was for the particular German State, in which his immediate sphere of action lay. German States might quarrel among themselves about particular established privileges. Anyone who wished for the continuance of the established state of affairs, and this must undoubtedly 152 STARTING-POINT FOR NEW EDUCATION 153 have been the wish of every sensible person for the sake of the more remote consequences, must have d lired right to prevail, no matter on what side it might be. A particular German State could, at most, have airied at uniting the whole German nation under its sway, and at introducing autocracy in place of the established republic of peoples. Suppose, as I for instance of cour^ - maintain, that it is just this republican constitution that has hitherto been the best source of German civilization and the chief guarantee of its individuality. Then, if the unity of government which we are presupposing had itself borne, not the republican, but the monarchical form, under which it would have been possible for the autocrat to nip in the bud for his lifetime any new branch of original culture throughout the whole German soil if my sup position is true, I say, it would certainly have been a great disaster for the cause of German love of fatherland, if that plan had succeeded, and every man of noble mind throughout the whole length and breadth of the common soil would have been bound to resist it. Yet, even in this most unfortunate event, it would always have been Germans who ruled over Germans and were the original directors of their affairs. Even if for a short period the characteristic German spirit had been lacking, there would still have remained the hope that it would awake again, and every stout heart throughout the whole country could have expected to get a hearing and to make itself intelligible. A German nation would always have remained in existence and have ruled itself, and would not have sunk into an existence of a lower order.- Here the essential point in our calculation is always that German national love itself either is at the helm of the German State or can reach it with its influence. But if, according to our previous supposition, the control of the German 154 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION State whether now that State appear as one or as seve* il does not matter ; in reality it is one dropped front German into foreign hands, it is certain for the oppobfte would be contrary to all nature and utterly impossible it is certain, I say, that from that moment onwards no longer German, but foreign interests would decide. V 7 hereas formerly the united national interest of the Germans had its place and was represented at the helm of the State, it would now be banished. Now, if it is not to be completely destroyed from off the earth, another place of refuge must be prepared for it, and that in what alone remains, with the governed, among the citizens. If it already existed in the majority of them, we should not have got into the plight which we are now I considering ; therefore, it does not exist in them, and must (first of all be instilled in them. In other words, the majority of the citizens must be educated to this sense pf fatherland, and, in order that one may be sure of the majority, this education must be tried on all. So with this it is now plainly and clearly proved, as was likewise ^formerly promised, that education is the only possible Imeans of saving German independence. Undoubtedly it will not be our fault if anyone has not even yet been able to grasp the true content and the purpose of these addresses, and the sense in which all our statements are to be taken. 127. To put it more briefly. According to our sup position, those who need protection are deprived of the guardianship of their parents and relatives, whose place has been taken by masters. If they are not to become absolute slaves, they must be released from guardianship, and the first step in this direction is to educate them to manhood. German love of fatherland has lost its place ; it shall get another, a wider and deeper one ; there in STARTING-POINT FOR NEW EDUCATION 155 peace and obscurity it shall establish itself and harden itself like steel, and at the right moment break forth in youthful strength and restore to the State its lost independence. Now, in regard to this restoration foreigners, and also those among us who have petty and narrow minds and despairing hearts, need not be alarmed ; one can console them with the assurance that not one of them will live to see it, and that the age which will live to see it will think otherwise than they. 128. Now whether this proof, closely though its parts hang together, will affect others and stimulate them to activity, depends first of all upon whether there is such a thing as the German individuality and German love of fatherland which we have described, and whether it is worth preserving and striving after or not. That the foreigner, abroad or at home, denies this may be taken for granted ; but his advice is not asked for. Besides, it is to be noted here that the deciding of this question does not depend at all upon proof by conceptions ; these can certainly make us clear in this matter, but can give no information about real existence or value, which can be proved only by the immediate experience of each individual. In a case like this, though millions may say that it does not exist, that can never mean more than that it does not exist in them ; by no means, however, that it does not exist at all ; and if a single person rises against these millions and declares that it does exist, he carries his point against them all. Nothing prevents me, as I now speak, from being in the given case that one person who asserts that he knows from immediate experience that there is such a thing as German love of fatherland, that he knows the infinite value of its object, that this love alone has driven him, in spite of every danger, to say what he has said and will still say, since nothing else 156 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION is left to us now but speech, and even it is checked and restrained in every way. Whoever feels this within him will be convinced ; whoever does not feel it cannot be convinced, for my proof rests entirely on that supposition ; on him my words are lost ; but who would not stake something so insignificant as words ? 129. That definite education, from which we expect the salvation of the German nation, has been described in general terms in our second and third addresses. We described it as a complete regeneration of the human race, and it will be appropriate to link up with this description a repetition of the general survey. 130. As a rule, the world of the senses was formerly accepted as the only true and really existing world ; it was the first that was brought before the pupil in educa tion. From it alone was he led on to thought and, for the most part, to thought that was about it and in its service. The new education exactly reverses this order. For it the world that is comprehended by thought is the only true and really existing world, and into this it wishes to introduce the pupil from the very beginning. It is only to this world of the spirit that it wishes to link his whole love and his whole pleasure, so that with him there will inevitably begin and develop a life in it alone. Formerly there lived in the majority naught but flesh, matter, and nature ; through the new education spirit alone shall live in the majority, yea, very soon in all, and spur them on ; the stable and certain spirit, which was mentioned before as the only possible foundation of a well-organized State, shall be produced everywhere. 131. Such an education undoubtedly achieves the object which we have specially set before us and from which our addresses started. That spirit which is to be produced includes the higher love of fatherland, the STARTING-POINT FOR NEW EDUCATION 157 conception of its earthly life as eternal and of the father land as the support of that eternity. If it is produced in the Germans, it will include love of the German father land as one of its essential elements, and from that love there spring of themselves the courageous defender of his country and the peaceful and honest citizen. Such an education, indeed, achieves even more than that immediate object ; that is always the case when thorough going measures are willed for a great purpose ; the whole man is inwardly perfected and completed in every part, and outwardly equipped with perfect fitness for all his purposes in time and eternity. Spiritual nature has inseparably connected our complete cure from all the evils that oppress us with our recovery as a nation and fatherland. 132. We have nothing more to do here with the stupid surprise of some, when we assert such a world of pure thought, and assert it, indeed, as the only possible world, and reject the world of sense ; nor have we anything more to do with those who deny the former world altogether, or deny only the possibility that the majority of the people at large can be brought into it. We have already completely rejected these things. He who does not yet know that there is a world of thought can instruct himself meanwhile about it elsewhere by the available means ; we have no time for that instruction here. But we do intend just this ; to show how even the majority of the people at large can be raised into that world. 133. Now, in our deliberate opinion the idea of such a new education is not to be considered as simply a picture set up for the exercise of ingenuity of mind or of skill in argument, but is rather to be put into practice at once and introduced into life. Our task, therefore, 158 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION is first of all to point out what already exists in the actual world with which the realization of this should be con nected. We give this answer to the question : it ought to be connected with the system of instruction invented and proposed by Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, and already successfully practised under his eyes. We intend to give good reasons for this decision of ours and to define it clearly. First of all, we have read and reflected over the man s own writings, from which we have formed our conception of his art of instruction and education. We have taken no notice of the reports and opinions of the current literary periodicals, nor of their further opinions upon those opinions. We observe this in order to recommend this method and the complete avoidance of its opposite to everyone who wishes likewise to have a conception of this subject. Similarly, up to the present we have not desired to see anything of it in actual practice ; not from disrespect, but because we wanted first to provide our selves with a definite and clear conception of the inventor s true intention. The application may often fall short of the intention, but from that conception the conception of the application and of the inevitable result follows without any experiment, and, equipped with this alone, one can truly understand the application and judge it correctly. If, as some believe, even this system of instruction has already degenerated here and there into blind, empirical groping and into empty play and show, for that the author s fundamental conception, at least, is in my opinion quite blameless. 134. Now this fundamental conception is warranted for me, first of all by the individuality of the man himself, as he shows it in his writings with the truest and most STARTING-POINT FOR NEW EDUCATION 159 hearty frankness. I could have used him, just as well as I used Luther or as I might use anyone else if there have been others like them, to demonstrate the char acteristics of the German spirit and to give the gratifying proof that this spirit, in all its miraculous power, reigned down to the present day within the range of the German tongue. He, also, has spent a laborious life struggling with every possible obstacle ; within, with his own stubborn obscurity and awkwardness and his very scanty supply of the most ordinary aids to scholarly education ; without, with continual misunderstanding. Towards an end, which he simply surmised and which was quite unknown to him, he has struggled, upheld and stimulated by an unconquerable and all-powerful and German impulse, a love of the poor neglected people. As in the case of Luther, only in another connection and one more in keeping with his age, this all-powerful love had made him its instrument and had become the life of his life. It was the unknown but definite and unchanging guide which led his life through the all-enveloping night, and, because it was impossible for such a love to leave the earth unrewarded, crowned its evening with his truly spiritual invention, which achieved far more than he had ever longed for in his boldest wishes. He wished simply to help the people ; but his invention, when developed to the full, raises the people, removes every difference between them and an educated class, provides national education instead of the desired popular education, and might, indeed, have the power of helping peoples and the whole human race to rise from the depths of their present misery. 135. This fundamental conception of his appears in his writings with complete clearness and unmistakable precision. First of all, in regard to the form, he desires, 160 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION not the caprice and blind groping that has hitherto existed, but a definite and deliberate art of education ; that is what we, too, wish and what German thoroughness must necessarily wish. He relates 1 very frankly how a French phrase, that he wanted to make education mecha nical, made his mind clear concerning this aim of his. In regard to the content, the first step in the new educa tion described by me is that it shall stimulate and train the free activity of the pupil s mind, his thought, in which later the world of his love shall dawn for him. With this first step Pestalozzi s writings deal excellently ; our examination of his fundamental conception treats this subject first of all. In this regard his censure of the previous system of instruction, that it has only plunged the pupil in mist and shadow and has never let him reach actual truth and reality, agrees with ours, that this system has never been able to influence life, nor to form the root of life. Pestalozzi s proposed remedy for this, to lead the pupil to direct perception, is synony mous with ours, to stimulate his mental activity to the creation of images and to let him learn everything just by this free formation ; for perception of what has been freely created is the only possible perception. The application, to be mentioned later, proves that the inventor really means this, and does not understand by perception that blindly groping and fumbling sense- impression. Quite rightly, too, this general and very far- reaching law is laid down for the stimulation of the pupil s perception by education : from the beginning keep pace exactly with the evolution of the child s powers that are to be developed. 136. On the other hand, in Pestalozzi s system of instruction all the mistakes in terms and proposals have 1 [See De Guimps,Life of Pestalozzi, Sonnenschein & Co., 1903, p. 183.] STARTING-POINT FOR NEW EDUCATION 161 one common source, the confusion and opposition of two things ; on one side, the paltry and limited end originally aimed at, namely, to lend such aid as is abso lutely necessary to those children from among the people who are the most neglected, on the supposition that the whole people will remain as it is ; and on the other side, the means leading to a far higher end. One is saved from all error and obtains a completely consistent conception by dropping the former and everything that results from its consideration, and keeping only to the latter and carry ing it out consistently. Undoubtedly it was solely the desire to release from school as soon as possible the very poorest children for bread-winning, and yet to provide them with a means of making up for the interrupted instruction, that gave rise in Pestalozzi s loving heart to the over-estimation of reading and writing, to the setting up of these as almost the aim and climax of popular education, and to his simple belief in the testimony of past centuries, that this is the best aid to instruction. For otherwise he would have found that reading and writing have been hitherto just the very instruments for envelop ing men in mist and shadow and for making them con ceited. That same desire of his is undoubtedly the source of several other proposals that are in contradiction to his priru:ipla^ol_direct: perception, and especially his utterly false notion of language as a means of raising our race from dim perception to clear ideas. For our part, we have not spoken of the education of the people in opposi tion to that of the higher classes, because we no longer want to have the word " people " used in the sense of vulgar common populace, nor can German national interests tolerate this sense of the word any longer ; but we have spoken of national education. If it shall ever come to this, the miserable wish that education shall ii 162 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION be finished very soon and the child again set to work must not be breathed any longer, but given up right at the beginning of the consideration of this matter. In my opinion, indeed, this education will not be expensive, the institutions will be able to maintain themselves to a great extent, and work will not suffer. I shall state my thoughts about this in due course ; but even if it were not so, the pupil must unconditionally, and at any cost, remain until education is and can be finished. That half- education is not a bit better than none at all ; it leaves matters as they were ; and if anyone desires this, he had better dispense also with the half and declare plainly at the very beginning that he does not want mankind to be helped. Now, assuming that the pupil is to remain until education is finished, reading and writing can be of no use in the purely national education, so long as this education continues. But it can, indeed, be very harm- Vul ; because, as it has hitherto so often done, it may easily Jjead the pupil astray from direct perception to mere signs, and from attention, which knows that it grasps nothing if it does not grasp it now and here, to distrac tion, which consoles itself by writing things down and wants to learn some day from paper what it will probably never learn, and, in general, to the dreaming which so often accompanies dealings with the letters of the alphabet. Not until the very end of education, and as its last gift for the journey, should these arts be imparted and the pupil led by analysis of the language, of which he has been completely master for a long time, to discover and use the letters. After the rest of the training he has already acquired, this would be play. 137. So much for the purely universal national educa tion. It is a different matter with the future scholar. Some day he shall not only express his feelings about what is STARTING-POINT FOR NEW EDUCATION 163 universally valid, but also by solitary reflection lift up into the light of language the hidden and real depths of his heart, of which he is unconscious. He must, therefore, get into his hands sooner, in the form of writing, the instru ment of this solitary yet audible thought, and learn to create ; yet even in his case there will be less need of haste than there has been in the past. This will become distinctly clearer in due course, when we distinguish between purely national and scholarly education. 138. Everything that Pestalozzi says about sound and word as means for the development of mental power is to be corrected and limited in accordance with this view. The scope of these addresses does not permit me to go into details. I make, however, just the following remark which profoundly affects the whole matter. His book for mothers contains the foundation of his development of all knowledge ; for, among other things, he relies very much on home education. First of all, so far as this home education itself is concerned, we have certainly no desire to quarrel with him over the hopes that he forms of mothers. But, so far as our higher conception of a national education is concerned, we are firmly con vinced that, especially among the working classes, it cannot be either begun, continued, or ended in the parents house, nor, indeed, without the complete separation of the children from them. The hardship, the daily anxiety about making ends meet, the petty meanness and avarice, which occur here, would inevitably infect the children, drag them down, and prevent them from making a free flight into the world of thought. This also is one of the absolute and indispensable conditions for the realization of our scheme. We have seen enough of what will happen if mankind as a whole repeats itself in each successive generation as it was in the previous one. If its complete 1 64 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION reformation is intended, it must once for all be entirely separated from itself and cut off altogether from its old life. Not until a generation has passed through the new education can the question be considered, as to what part of the national education shall be entrusted to the home. 1 39. Setting that aside, and considering Pestalozzi s book for mothers simply as the first foundation of instruction ; to take, as the book does, the child s body as the subject of instruction is also a complete mistake. He starts with the very correct statement, that the first object of the child s knowledge must be the child himself. But is the child s body, then, the child himself? If it must be a human body, would not the mother s body be far closer and more visible to him ? And how can the child obtain a perceptual knowledge of his body, without first having learnt to use it ? That information is not know ledge, but simply the learning by heart of arbitrary word-symbols, brought about by the over-estimation of speaking. The true foundation of instruction and knowledge w r ould be, to use Pestalozzi s language, an A B C of the sensations. When the child begins to understand, and imperfectly to make, speech sounds, he should be led to make himself quite clear, whether he is hungry or sleepy, whether he sees or hears the actual sensation denoted by this or that expression, or, indeed, simply imagines it. He should be clear, too, as to the differences and degrees of difference of the various impressions on the same sense that are denoted by special words, e.g., the colours and the sounds of different bodies, etc. All this should take place in succession, developing properly and regularly the power of sensation. By this means the child first obtains an ego, which he abstracts in free and conscious conception, and which he scrutinizes STARTING-POINT FOR NEW EDUCATION 165 by its aid ; as soon as it awakes to life, a mental eye is set in life, and from that time onward never leaves it. Thus, also, measure and number, in themselves empty forms, obtain for the succeeding exercises of perception their clearly recognized inner content which, according to Pestalozzi s method, can be given them only by obscure tendency and compulsion. In Pestalozzi s writ ings a confession, which is remarkable from this point of view, is made by one of his teachers who, when initiated into this method, began to perceive only empty geometrical bodies. This would happen to all pupils of that method if spiritual nature did not, unnoticed, guard against it. It is at this stage, too, when what is really perceived is thus clearly grasped, that not language signs, indeed, but speech itself and the need for expressing oneself to others trains man, and raises him out of darkness and confusion to clearness and definiteness. When the child first awakes to consciousness, all the impressions of surrounding nature immediately crowd upon him and are mingled to a vague chaos, in which no single thing stands out from among the general confusion. How is he ever to emerge from this stage of vagueness ? He needs the help of others ; he cannot get it except by definitely expressing his need and distinguishing it from similar needs which are already denoted in the language. Under the guidance of those distinctions he is compelled to reflect and to collect his thoughts, to notice what he actually feels, to compare it with, and differentiate it from, something else which he already knows but does not at present feel. Thus a conscious and free ego begins to be separated off in him. Now, education ought with deliberate and free art to continue the course which necessity and nature begin with us. 140. In the field of objective knowledge, which is 1 66 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION concerned with external objects, acquaintance with the word-sign adds absolutely nothing to the clearness and definiteness of the inner knowledge for the knower himself, but simply brings it within the sphere of what can be communicated to others, which is an altogether different sphere. The clearness of that knowledge depends entirely on perception, and whatever man s imagination can create again at will in all its parts, just as it really is, is fully known, whether one has a word for it or not. Indeed, we are convinced that this perfection of the perception should precede acquaintance with the word-symbol. The opposite process leads straight to that world of shadow and mist, and to premature loqua city, both of which are rightly so hateful to Pestalozzi. He who wants to know the word as soon as possible, and considers his knowledge increased as soon as he knows it, lives in that very world of mist and is anxious merely to extend it. Considering Pestalozzi s system of thought as a whole, I believe that it was just this A B C of sensation that he aimed at as the first foundation of mental develop ment and as the content of his book for mothers. In all his statements about language he had a dim notion of it, and it was only lack of training in philosophy that prevented him from becoming quite clear on this point. 141. Now, presupposing this development of the knowing subject by means of sensation and setting it as the first foundation of the national education we have in view, Pestalozzi s A B C of sense-perception, the theory of the relations of number and measure, is the entirely appropriate and excellent consequence. With this per ception any part of the world of sense can be connected ; it can be introduced into the domain of mathematics, until the pupil is sufficiently trained by these preliminary exercises to be led on to the planning of a social order of STARTING-POINT FOR NEW EDUCATION 167 mankind and to love of that order. This is the second and essential step in his training. 142. But in the first part of education another subject, which is also mentioned by Pestalozzi, is not to be over looked ; the development of the pupil s bodily powers, which must necessarily go hand in hand with those of the mind. He demands an A B C of Art, i.e., of the bodily powers. His most striking statements about this are the following : l " Striking, carrying, throwing, pushing, pulling, turning, struggling, swinging, etc., are the simplest exercises of strength. There is a natural sequence in these exercises from the beginnings to the perfect art, i.e., to the highest stage of the nerve rhythm, which ensures blow and push, swing and throw, in a hundred different ways, and makes hand and foot certain." In this, everything depends on the natural sequence, and it is not enough that we should interfere in a blind arbitrary way and introduce any kind of exercise, just in order that it may be said of us that we too, like the Greeks perhaps, have physical education. Now, everything still remains to be done in this matter, for Pestalozzi has supplied no A B C of Art. This must first of all be sup plied, and that certainly requires a man who is versed in the anatomy of the human body and also in scientific mechanics, and who combines with this knowledge a high degree of philosophical spirit. Such a man will be capable of discovering in all-round perfection that machine which the human body is designed to be, and of showing how this machine may gradually be developed out of every healthy human body, so that every advance occurs 1 [An almost exact quotation from Pestalozzi s Wie Gertrud ihre Kinder lehrt ; cf. Pestalozzi s Ausgewaehlte Schriften, ed. F. Mann, Langen- salza, vol. iii, p. 275, and see translation by Cooke, Sonnenschein & Co., 1907, pp. 177, 178.] 1 68 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION in the only possible correct sequence, thus preparing for and facilitating those that follow. Thereby the health and beauty of the body and the strength of the mind are not only not endangered, but are even confirmed and increased. It is obvious without further mention how indispensable this element is to an education which pro mises to train the whole man and is especially intended for a nation which shall restore again, and in the future maintain, its independence. We reserve for the next address what there is still to say by way of further definition of our conception of German national education. TENTH ADDRESS FURTHER DEFINITION OF THE GERMAN NATIONAL EDUCATION 143. THE training of the pupil to make clear to himself first his sensations and then his perceptions, which must be accompanied by a systematic art of training his body, is the first part of the new German national education. In regard to the education of perception, we have a suitable method from Pestalozzi. A method for the education of the power of sensation is still lacking, but he and his collaborators, who have been summoned chiefly to solve this problem, will be able to furnish this easily. A method for the systematic development of physical strength is still lacking. What is required for the solution of this problem has been indicated, and it is to be hoped that, if the nation should show any eager ness for this solution, it will be found. All this part of education is but a means and a preliminary exercise for the second essential part, the civic and religious education.) The general remarks that it is necessary at present to make about this have already been mentioned in our second and third addresses, and we have nothing to add to them. It is the business of that philosophy which proposes a German national education to furnish definite instruc tions for the art of this education always, of course, taking into consideration and consultation Pestalozzi s own 169 ijo ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION art of education. Once the need for such instructions arises, through the first part being fully carried out, that philosophy will not be slow to supply it. Every pupil, even if born in the lowest class for, in truth, the class into which children are born makes no difference to their talents will grasp, and indeed grasp easily, the instruction in those subjects. Such instruction, indeed, comprises, if you like, the most profound metaphysics and is the result of the most abstract speculation, and those subjects at present even scholars and speculating brains find it impossible to grasp. Let no one grow weary just now, wondering how this may be possible ; experience will teach this later, if only we will obey in regard to the first steps. It is only because our generation is held captive in the world of empty ideas and has not entered the world of true reality and perception at any point, that it is not to be expected that this generation should begin perception with the highest and most spiritual perception of all, and when it is already clever beyond measure. Philo sophy must require it to give up its present world and to provide itself with an entirely different one. It is no wonder if such a demand proves unavailing. But, from the very beginning, the pupil of our education has been at home in the world of perception and has never seen any other. He has not to change, but only to strengthen, his world ; and this takes place of itself. This education is, as we have already pointed out, the only possible education for philosophy and also the sole means of making philosophy universal. 144. Education ends with this civic and religious instruction, and the pupil is now to be released. Thus we are clear at any rate in regard to the content of the proposed education. 145. The pupil s faculty of knowledge must never be NEW EDUCATION FURTHER DEFINED 171 stimulated without love for the known object being f stimulated at_jJhje_-same time, for otherwise knowledge remains dead ; similarly, love must never be stimulated without becoming clear to knowledge, for otherwise love remains blind. This is one of the chief principles of our proposed education, with which Pestalozzi also must agree, since it is in accordance with his whole system of thought. Now, the stimulation and development of this love is connected with the systematic course of instruction by means of sensation and perception, and arises without our design or assistance. The child has a natural inclina tion for clearness and order. This is continually satisfied in that course of instruction, and so fills the child with joy and pleasure. But, while in this state of satisfaction, he is stimulated again by the new obscurities that now appear, and so he is satisfied anew. Thus life is passed in love of and pleasure in learning. It is this love by means of which each individual is connected with the world of ^thought ; it is th.e..bQnd_Df_JJie__ .sensuous and_ spiritual worlds. This love renders possible the easy develop menTof the faculty of knowledge and the success ful cultivation of the fields of science ; a result that is certain and premeditated in this education, but which was formerly attained by chance in the case of a few specially favoured persons. 146. But there is yet another love, that which binds man to man and combines all individuals into one rational community with the same disposition. The first kind of love fashions knowledge ; this other kind fashions the life of action and stimulates people to show forth in them selves and in others that which has become part of their knowledge. Since for our special purpose it would be of little use simply to improve the scholar s education, and since the national education intended by us aims first of 172 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION all at training not scholars but simply men, it is clear that, in addition to that first love, the development of the second is also an essential duty of this education. Pestalozzi speaks of this subject with soul-stirring enthusiasm. Yet we must confess that his statements did not seem at all clear to us, and, least of all, so clear that they could serve as the foundation for an art of developing that love. It is therefore necessary for us to state our own thoughts concerning such a foundation. 147. The usual assumption, that man is by nature selfish, that the child also is born with this selfishness, and that it is education alone which implants in him a moral motive, is founded on very superficial observation, and is utterly false. Nothing can be created from nothing, and the development of a fundamental instinct, no matter to what extent, can never make it the opposite of itself. How then could education ever implant morality in the child, if morality did not exist in him originally and before all education ? It does, therefore, actually exist in all V human children that are born into the world ; the task I is simply to find out the purest and most primitive form in which it appears. - 148. "The results of speculative thought, as well as common observation, agree that the purest and most primitive form of morality is the instinct for respect, and that from this instinct there arises our knowledge of what is moral as the only possible object of respect, the right, the good, veracity, and the power of self-control. In the child this instinct appears first of all as the desire to be respected by those who inspire in him the highest respect. This instinct goes to prove with certainty that love does not arise from selfishness at all, because it is directed as a rule far more strongly and decisively towards the sterner parent, the father, who is more often absent, NEW EDUCATION FURTHER DEFINED 173 and who does not appear directly as a benefactor, than towards the mother, who with her beneficence is ever present. The child wants to be noticed by him, wants to have his approval ; only in so far as the father is satis fied with him is he satisfied with himself. This is the natural love of the child for the father, not as the guardian of his sensuous well-being, but as the mirror, from which his own worth or worthlessness is reflected for him. Now, the father himself can easily connect with this love obedience and every kind of self-denial ; for the reward of his hearty approval the child obeys with joy. Then again, this is the love which the child longs for from the father ; that he shall notice the child s effort to be good, and acknowledge it ; that he shall show that it gives him joy when he can approve, and grieves him heartily when he must disapprove ; that he desires nothing more than always to be able to be satisfied with him, and all his demands on the child have simply the intention of making him ever better and more worthy of respect. Again, the sight of this love continually animates and strengthens the child s love, and gives him new strength for all his further efforts. On the other hand, that love is killed by being disregarded, and by continual unjust misunderstanding ; in particular, it produces even hate, if in dealing with the child one allows selfishness to appear, and, e.g., treats as a capital crime some damage caused by his carelessness. He then sees himself regarded as a mere tool, and this outrages his feeling that he must himself be of worth, a feeling that is dim, indeed, but yet not absent. 149. To prove this by an example. What is it that with the child adds shame to the pain of chastisement, and what is this shame ? Obviously it is the feeling of self-contempt, which is an inevitable accompaniment when the displeasure of his parents and educators is shown 174 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION to him. Therefore, where punishment is not accompanied by shame, there is an end of education, and the punishment appears as an act of violence, which the pupil proudly disregards and ridicules. 150. The bond, therefore, which makes men of one mind, and the development of which is a chief part of education for manhood, is not sensuous love, but the instinct for mutual respect. That instinct appears in two forms ; in the child it begins as unconditional respect for adults and becomes the desire to be respected by them, and to measure by means of their actual respect how far he also should respect himself. This confidence, not in one s own but in an external standard of self-respect, is also the special characteristic of childhood and youth. On its existence alone is based the possibility of all instruction and of all education of growing youths to perfect men. The adult has in himself his standard of self-esteem, and wishes to be respected by others only in so far as they have first of all made themselves worthy of his respect. With him that instinct assumes the form of demanding that he shall be able to respect others, and that he shall himself produce something worthy of respect. If there is no such fundamental instinct in man, whence then arises the phenomenon, that even the tolerably good man grieves to find men worse than he thought they were, and is deeply hurt at having to despise them ; for selfishness, on the con trary, is necessarily pleased at being able to exalt itself haughtily above others ? Now, the educator must exhibit this latter characteristic of adult manhood, just as, in the case of the pupil, the former characteristic is to be relied on with certainty. In this respect, the aim of education is just to produce adult manhood in the sense that we have mentioned. Only when that aim is attained is education really completed and ended. Hitherto many NEW EDUCATION FURTHER DEFINED 175 men have remained children all their lives, viz., those who needed for their satisfaction the approval of neigh bours, and believed they had done nothing right unless they pleased the latter. In contrast to these, strong robust characters have been those few who could rise above the judgment of others and satisfy themselves. As a rule, the latter have been hated, while the former were not, indeed, respected, but were, nevertheless, considered amiable. 151. The foundation of all moral education is this; that one should know there is such an instinct in the child and presuppose it firmly established ; then, that one should recognize it when it appears, and gradually develop it more and more by suitable stimulation, and by pre senting to it material for its satisfaction. The very first principle is to direct it to the only object that is suitable, viz., to moral matters, but not to put it off with some material that is foreign to it. Learning, for instance, contains within itself its charm and its reward. Strenuous diligence could at most deserve approval as an exercise in self-control ; but this free and supererogatory diligence will scarcely find a place, at least in the purely universal national education. That the pupil will learn what he ought to must, therefore, be regarded as a matter of course, of which nothing more is to be said. The quicker and better learning of the more capable mind must be regarded merely as a natural phenomenon, which entitles him to no praise or distinction, and above all does not palliate other defects. It is in moral matters alone that a sphere of action ought to be allotted to this instinct ; but the root of all morality is self-possession, self-control, the subordination of the selfish instincts to the idea of the community. By this alone, and by absolutely nothing else, shall it be possible for the pupil to receive the educa- 176 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION tor s approval, which he is directed by his spiritual nature, and accustomed by education, to need for his own satisfaction. As we have already mentioned in our second address, there are two very different ways of subordinat ing the personal self to the community. First of all, that way which absolutely must exist and can in no wise be omitted by anyone, subordination to the law of the constitution which is drawn up merely for the regulation of the community. He who does not transgress this law is not blamed, and that is all; he does not, however, receive approbation. Similarly, real displeasure and censure would fall upon him who transgressed ; this would take place in public if the wrong were, public, and if it remained ineffective, it could even be intensified by the addition of punishment. Secondly, there is that subordination of the individual to the community which cannot be demanded but can only be given voluntarily, viz., the raising and advancing of the well-being of the community by self-sacrifice. In order to impress correctly upon the pupils from youth upwards the mutual relationship of mere legality and this higher virtue, it will be appropriate to allow him only, against whom for a certain period there has been no complaint in regard to legality, to make these voluntary sacrifices as the reward, so to speak, of legality, but to refuse this permission to him who is not yet quite sure of himself in regard to regularity and order. The objects of such voluntary acts have already been pointed out in general, and will be indicated still more clearly later. Let this kind of sacrifice receive active approbation and real recognition of its merits, not in public in the form of praise, which might corrupt the heart, make it vain, and turn it from its independence, but in secret and with the pupil alone. This recognition ought to be nothing more than the outward expression of the pupil s own good NEW EDUCATION FURTHER DEFINED 177 conscience, the ratification of his satisfaction with him self and of his self-respect, and the encouragement to rely still further on himself. The following arrangement would promote admirably the advantages hereby intended. Where there are several male and female teachers, which we assume will be the rule, let each child choose freely, and as his feelings and confidence move him, one of them as a special friend and, as it were, adviser in matters of conscience. Let him seek his advice whenever it is difficult for him to do right. Let the teacher help him by friendly exhortation ; let him be the confidant of the voluntary acts which he undertakes ; and, finally, let him be the person who crowns excellence with his approval. Now, through these advisers in matters of conscience education would inevitably be of systematic aid to each individual in his own rise to ever greater power of self-control and self- possession. In this way steadiness and independence will i gradually arise ; with their production, education comes I to an end and ceases. By our own deeds and actions is the sphere of the moral world most clearly opened to us ; when it is thus opened to anyone, it is in truth opened to him. Such a person himself now knows what is contained in the moral world, and no longer needs the testimony of others concerning himself ; he can sit properly in judg ment on himself, and is from now onwards an adult. 152. By means of what has just been said we have closed a gap that remained in our previous lecture and have, for the first time, made our proposal really practicable. Pleasure in the right and good for its own sake ought to be set, by means of the new education, in the place of the material hope or fear that has been employed hitherto ; this pleasure, as the sole existing motive, ought to set all future life in motion ; this is the essential feature of our proposal. But the first question that arises here is this ; 12 178 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION how, then, is this pleasure itself to be created ? Created, indeed, in the proper sense of the word, it cannot be, for men cannot make something out of nothing. If our proposal is to be practicable at all, this pleasure must exist originally, and be simply present and innate in all I men without exception. And in fact it is so. Every child without exception wishes to be upright and good, and i does not want merely to be healthy, like a young animal. Love is the essential element in man ; it exists, as man exists, whole and complete, and nothing can be added to it, for it transcends the growing phenomenon of the sensuous life, and is independent of it. It is knowledge alone to which this sensuous life is connected, and which begins and develops with it. This development is but slow and gradual with the progress of time ; how, then, is that innate love to pass through the years of ignorance, and develop and exercise itself until an ordered system of ideas of right and wrong is formed, to which the motive of plea sure can be connected ? Wise nature has removed the difficulty without any assistance from us. Consciousness, starting from within the child, presents itself to him outwardly, embodied in the judgment of the adult world. Until a rational judge is developed in him, he is referred to this world by a natural instinct, and thus a conscience is given him outside himself, until one is produced within him. The new education ought to recognize this truth, but little known until now, and guide towards what is right the love that exists independent of education. Up to now, this simplicity and childlike faith of the young in the higher perfection of adults has been used, as a rule, for their corruption. It was pre cisely their innocence and their natural faith in us that made it possible for us, before they could distinguish good from evil, to implant in them, instead of the good NEW EDUCATION FURTHER DEFINED 179 that they inwardly wished, our own corruption, which they would have abhorred if they had been able to recognize it. 153. This, I say, is the very greatest transgression of which our age is guilty, and this also explains a phenomenon of daily occurrence ; that, as a rule, man becomes so much the worse, more selfish, more dead to all good impulses, and more unfit for any good deed, the older he gets and the farther he has gone from the early days , of his innocence days which even yet echo, though faintly, in some intimations of the Good. It also proves that the present generation, if it does not completely isolate its successors, will inevitably leave behind an even more corrupt posterity, and this, again, one still more corrupt. An honoured teacher of the human race says of them with striking truth, that it were better that a millstone were hanged at once about their neck, and they were drowned in the depths of the sea. It is an absurd slander on human nature to say that man is born a sinner. If that were true, how, then, could there ever come to him an idea of sin, which, indeed, is possible only in contrast with what is not sin ? His life makes him a sinner, and human life hitherto was usually a progressive development in sinfulness. 154. What has been said shows in a new light the necessity of making preparation without delay for a real education. If only the youths of the future could grow up without any contact with adults and entirely without education, one might always test what the result would be. But even if we only leave them in our society, their education takes place of itself without any wish or will of ours. They educate themselves to us ; to be like us, that forces itself upon them as their pattern. They emulate us, even without our requiring this, and desire i8o ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION nothing more than , to become just as we are. Now, usually the great majority of us are thoroughly perverse, partly without knowing it ; and because we are ourselves just as simple as children, we consider our perversity to be what is right. Even if we knew that we were perverse, how could we suddenly lay aside, in the presence of our children, that which a long life has made second nature to us, and exchange our whole former disposition and spirit for a new one ? In contact with us they must become corrupt ; that is unavoidable. If we have a spark of love for them, we must remove them from our tainted atmosphere and erect a purer abode for them. We must bring them into the society of men who, whatever they may be in other respects, have at least, by continuous practice, become accustomed, and gained the ability, to remember that children are watching them, the power of restraining themselves at least for so long, and the knowledge of how one must appear before children. We must not let them out of this society into ours again, until they have learnt to detest thoroughly all our corruption, and are thereby completely safe from all infection. These are the points that we have considered it neces sary to bring forward here concerning moral education in general. 155. That the children ought to live together in com plete isolation from adults, with only their teachers and masters, has been mentioned several times. It is under stood, without special note from us, that this education must be given to both sexes in the same way. A separa tion of the sexes into special institutions for boys and girls would not suit our purpose, and would break several important principles of the education for perfect manhood. The subjects of instruction are the same for both sexes ; NEW EDUCATION FURTHER DEFINED 181 the difference in the manual tasks can easily be maintained, even while the rest of the education is common. Like the larger society which they are to enter some day as perfect human beings, the smaller society in which they are trained for manhood must consist of a combination of both sexes. Both must first of all recognize and learn to love in one another their common humanity, and must have male and female friends, before their attention is directed to sex distinction and they become husbands and wives. Also, the general relationship of the two sexes to each other, stout-hearted protection on the one side and loving help on the other, must appear in the educational institution and be fostered in the pupils. 156. If our proposal should come to be realized, the first business would be to frame a law for the internal organization of these educational institutions. If the fundamental principle we have put forward once becomes thoroughly established, this is a very easy task, and we do not intend to lose time over it here. 157. It is a principal requirement of this new national education that in it learning and working shall be com bined, that the institution shall appear, to the pupils at least, to be self-supporting, and that everyone shall be reminded to contribute to this aim with all his strength. This is in any case directly required by the problem of education as such, quite apart from the purpose of outward practicability and of economy, which will undoubtedly be expected of our proposal. One reason is that all who get through only the universal national education are intended for the working classes, and training them to be good workmen is undoubtedly part of their education. The special reason, however, is that a man s well-founded confidence that he will always be able to get on in the world by his own strength, and that he requires for maintenance 1 82 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION no charity from others, is part of man s personal independ ence, and conditions moral independence much more than seems to be believed at present. This training would supply another part of education, which one might call education in the proper management of one s resources, which hitherto has also usually been left to blind chance. This part of education must be considered, not from the paltry and narrow point of view of saving for the sake of saving, which some ridicule with the name of economy, but from the higher moral standpoint. Our age often lays down as a principle beyond all contradiction that one must flatter, cringe, and be everyone s lackey, if one wishes to live, and that no other way will do. Our age does not reflect that, even if one should wish to spare it the counter-proposition (which may sound heroic, but is absolutely true), namely that, if such is the case, it ought not to go on living but ought to die, there yet remains the remark that our age ought to have learnt to live with honour. Let anyone fully inquire who are the persons conspicuous for dishonourable behaviour ; he will always find that they have not learnt to work, or that they are afraid of work, and, moreover, manage things badly. The pupil of our education ought, therefore, to be made accustomed to work, in order that he may be raised above the temptation to dishonesty in his struggle for a living. It ought to be impressed deeply on his mind as the very first principle of honour, that it is shameful to be willing to owe his means of existence to anything but his own work. 158. Pestalozzi wishes all kinds of manual work to be carried on together with learning. We do not wish to deny the possibility of this combination under the con dition mentioned by him, that the child is already thoroughly skilled in manual work ; yet this proposal seems NEW EDUCATION FURTHER DEFINED 183 to us to arise from the paltriness of the original aim. In my opinion, instruction must be represented as so sacred and honourable that it requires the whole attention and concentration, and cannot be received along with some thing else. If such manual work as knitting, spinning, etc., is to be carried on during working hours in seasons which in any case keep the pupils indoors, it will be very useful to combine with it collective mental exercises under supervision, in order that the mind may remain active. But in this case the work is the important thing, and these exercises are to be regarded, not as instruction, but merely as recreation. 159. In general, all manual work of this inferior kind must be put forward only as incidental, and not as essen tial. The essential manual work is the practice of agri culture, gardening, cattle rearing, and those, trades which they need in their little State. Of course, the partici pation in these that is expected of anyone is to be pro portional to the physical strength of his age ; the rest of the energy is to be supplied by machines and tools that will be invented. Here the chief consideration is that, so far as possible, the pupils must understand the prin ciples of what they do, and that they have already received the information necessary for their occupations concern ing the growing of plants, the characteristics and needs of the animal body, and the laws of mechanics. In this way their education becomes a kind of course of instruc tion in the occupations which they have to follow in the future, and the thoughtful and intelligent farmer is trained by direct perception. Further, their mechanical work is even at this stage ennobled and made intellectual ; it is just as much a verification from direct perception of what they have grasped in their minds, as it is work for a living. Even though associated with the animal and 1 84 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION with the clod, they do not sink to the level of these, but remain within the sphere of the spiritual world. 1 60. Let it be the fundamental law of this little economic State that no article of food, clothing, etc., and, so far as this is possible, no tool is to be used, which is not produced and made there. If this housekeeping requires support from outside, natural objects should be supplied, but none of any other kind than those it possesses. This must be done without the pupils learning that their own products have been increased ; or, if it is appropriate that they should be told, they should receive the supply simply as a loan and return it at a fixed time. Now, for this independence and self-sufficiency of the community every individual should work with all his might, without making a statement of account with it or claiming anything for his own property. Everyone should know that he is indebted absolutely to the community, and should eat or starve along with the community. Thereby the hon ourable independence of the State and of the family, which he is to enter some day, and the relationship of their individual members to them, is disclosed to his vivid observation and rooted ineradicably in his heart. 161. This training to mechanical work is the point at which the education of the scholar, which is a part of, and rests upon, the universal national education, diverges from the latter. The scholar s education, which is now to be discussed, is, I said, part of the universal national education. I offer no opinion as to whether in the future everyone who believes he has sufficient ability to study or ranks himself for any reason with the higher- classes of former days will not still be free to take the old path of scholarly education. If we should once get our national education, experience will show how the majority of those scholars will fare, with their purchased learning, NEW EDUCATION FURTHER DEFINED 185 against, I will not say the scholar trained in the new school, but even against the ordinary man produced by it. However, I want to speak now, not of that, but of the scholar s education according to the new method. According to its principles, the future scholar, too, must have gone through the universal national education and have received completely and clearly its first part, the development of knowledge by sensation, perception, and whatever is connected with the latter. Permission to take up this profession can be granted by the new national education only to the boy who shows an excellent gift for learning and a conspicuous inclination for the world of ideas. It must, however, grant this permission to every boy who shows these qualities, without exception and without regard to so-called difference of birth. For a man is not a scholar for his own convenience ; every^_talent of that kind is a preciou^_ossession of the nation, and may not be taken from it. 162. The^person who is not a scholar is destined to maintain the human race at the stage of culture it has reached, the scholar to advance it further according to a clear conception and with deliberate art. The scholar with his conception must always be in advance of the present age, must understand the future, and be able to implant it in the present for its future development. For this purpose he needs a clear survey of the previous condition of the world, unlimited skill in pure thought independent of phenomena, and, in order that he may be able to communicate his thoughts, control of language down to its living and creative root. All this necessitates mental self-activity, without guidance from others, and solitary reflection, in which, therefore, the future scholar must be exercised from the moment his profession is decided ; it does not mean, as in the case of the person 1 86 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION who is not a scholar, merely thinking under the eye of an ever-present teacher ; it necessitates a great amount of subsidiary knowledge, which is quite useless in his voca tion to the person who is* not a scholar. This solitary reflection will be the scholar s work, the daily occupation of his life. He is to be trained at once for this work, but in return he is to be exempted from the other mechani cal toil. The education of the future scholar for manhood will, therefore, as formerly, proceed in general simultan eously with the universal national education, and along with all the others he will attend the instruction it supplies. Only those hours which the others spend in manual work will be devoted to the study of whatever his future profession specifically demands ; this will be the only difference. The general knowledge of agriculture, of other mechanical arts, and of their particular methods, which is to be expected of every man, the scholar will undoubtedly have learnt already while passing through the first class ; if he has not, he will have to acquire that knowledge afterwards. It is obvious that he is the last pupil of all to be exempted from the physical exercises that are prescribed. To give an account of the particular subjects which a scholar s education would include, or the course to be followed in them, is, however, beyond the scope of these addresses. ELEVENTH ADDRESS ON WHOM WILL THE CARRYING-OUT OF THIS SCHEME OF EDUCATION DEVOLVE ? 163. THE scheme for the new German national education has been stated sufficiently for our purpose. The next question, which is now urgent, is this : who ought to place himself at the head to carry out this scheme, who is to be relied on, and on whom have we relied ? We have represented this ^ducation as the highest and, at present, the only ur gg n ^_^j^g ern of German love of fatherland, and wish to make it first and foremost the means of bringing into the world the improvement and regeneration of the whole human race. But that love of fatherland ought above all to inspire the German State, wherever Germans are governed, and take the-lead, and be the motive power in all its decisions. It is the State, therefore, to which we shall first of all have to turn our expectant gaze. Will it realize our hopes ? After what has already been said, what can we expect of it, looking, as is always understood, at no particular State, but at Germany as a whole ? 164. In modern Europe educatior! actually originated, not with the State, but with that power from which States, too, for the most part obtained their power from the heavenly spiritual kingdom of the Church. 187 1 88 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION The Church considered itself not so much a part of the earthly community as a colony from heaven quite foreign to the earthly community and sent out to enrol citizens for that foreign State, wherever it could take root. Its education aimed at nothing else but that men should not be damned in the other world but saved. The Refor mation merely united this ecclesiastical power, which otherwise continued to regard itself as before, to the temporal power, with which formerly it had very often been actually in conflict. In that connection, this was ^ the only difference that resulted from that event ; there / also remained, therefore, the old view of educational matters. Even in recent times, and until the present day, the education of the richer classes has been looked upon as the private concern of the parents, who might arrange it to their own satisfaction ; and their children were usually put to school simply because some day it would be useful to them. The sole public education, that of the people, however, was simply education for salvation in heaven ; the essential feature was a little Christianity and reading, with writing if it could be managed all for the sake of Christianity. All other development of man was left to the blind and casual influence of the society in which they grew up, and to actual life. Even the institutions for scholarly education were intended mainly for the training of ecclesiastics. Theology was the important faculty ; the others were merely supplementary to it, and usually received only its leavings. 165. So long as those who stood at the head of the Government remairfed in the dark concerning its true aim and were filled with that anxiety of conscience about the salvation of themselves and others, one could rely with certainty on their zeal for this kind of public educa- THE CARRYING-OUT OF THE SCHEME 189 tion and on their earnest efforts in its behalf. But, as soon as they were clear about the true aim of government and understood that the sphere of the State s action lies within the visible world, it must have been evident to them that anxiety about the eternal salvation of their subjects could be no concern of theirs, and that anyone who wanted to be saved there should see to it himself. From that time onwards they considered they were doing enough, if for the future they left to their original destiny the foundations and institutions that had origi nated in more pious ages. However unsuitable and insufficient they might be for totally changed times, they considered they were neither obliged to contribute to them by saving on their other aims, nor justified in interfering actively and setting useful innovations in the place of antiquated and useless things. To all pro posals of this kind the ever-ready answer was : the State has no money for that. If an exception were ever made, it was to the advantage of the institutions for higher education, which shed splendour far and wide, and pro cured fame for their patrons. But the education of that class which is the real foundation of the human race, by which the higher culture is ever restored, and on which that culture must continually react the education of the people remained neglected and, from the Reforma- tion down to the present day, has been in a state of increasing decay. 1 66. Now, if for the future, and from this very hour, we are to be able to hope better things in this matter from the State, it wijil have jto exchange what seems to have been up to the present its fundamental conception \ of th.e aim of education for an entirely different one. ! It must see that it was quite right before to refuse to be anxious about the eternal salvation of its citizens, because i 9 o ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION no s^ecia^ training is required for such salvation, and that a nursery for heaven, like the Church, whose power has at last been handed over to the State, should not be permitted, for it only obstructs all good education, and must be dispensed with. On the other hand,_the State / must see that education for ; Jife__on earth is very greatly / needed "; from such a thorough education, training for / heaven follows as an easy supplement. The more L enlightened the State thought it was before, the more firmly it seems to have believed that it could attain its true aim merely by means of coercive institutions, and without any religion and morality in its citizens, who might do as they liked in regard to such matters. May it have learnt this at least from recent experiences that it cannot do so, and that it has got into its present con dition just because of the want of religion and morality ! 167. As for the State s doubt whether it can meet the cost of a national education, would that one could con vince it that by this one expenditure it will. provide for most of the others in the most economical way, and that, if only it undertakes this, it will soon have no other big expenditure to make ! U^r^tp^jthe^^resent, by far the largest part of the State s income has been spent on the maintenance of standing armies. We have seen the result of that expenditure ; that is sufficient ; it is beyond our plan to go more deeply into the special reasons for that result, which lie in the organization of 7*-those armies. On the other hand, the State which introduced universally the national education proposed by us, from the moment that a new generation of youths had passed through it, would need no special army at ?~all, but would have in them an army such as no age has seen. Each individual is exercised thoroughly in every possible use of his physical powers, and under- THE CARRYING-OUT OF THE SCHEME 191 stands them at once, being accustomed to bear every effort and hardship ; his mind, developed in direct perception^ is ever alert and self-possessed ; in his heart there lives love of the community of which he is a member, of the State, and of his country, and this love destroys every other selfish impulse. The State can summon them and put them under arms when it will, and can be sure that no enemy will defeat them. Formerly, another source of concern and expenditure in wisely governed States was improvement in the management of the State s resources in its widest sense and in all its branches. In this, owing to the ignorance and helplessness of the lower classes, much care and money were spent in vain, and the matter has everywhere made but little progress. By means^of our education the State will get working- classes accustomed from their youth up to thinking about their business, and already able and inclined to help them selves. Now if, in addition, the State can help them in a suitable way, they will understand in a moment, and accept its instruction very gratefully. All branches of the State s economy will in a short time attain, without much difficulty, a prosperity which no age has yet seen ; and the State s original expenditure will be repaid a thousandfold, if it cares to reckon up and if by that time it has learnt the true fundamental value of things. o Hitherto the State has had to do a great deal, and yet has never been able to do enough, for law and police institu tions. Convict_.prispris and refpj_matjories have caused it expense. Finally, the more that was spent on poor- houses, the more they required ; indeed, under the prevailing circumstances, they seemed to be institutions for making people poor. In a State which makes the new education universal, the former wiH~"bF greatly reduced, the latter will vanish entirely. Early discipline 192 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION is a guarantee against the need in later years of reforma tion and penal discipline, which are very doubtful , measures, while in a nation so trained there are no poor I at all- 1 68. May the State and all its advisers dare to look its true present position in the face and acknowledge it ! May it realize vividly that, apart from the education of the succeeding generations, there remains absolutely no sphere, in which it can act originally and independently like a real State, and make decisions ! May it see that, if it does not want to do nothing at all, there is but this that it can still do, and may it realize, too, that no one will envy or detract from the merit of this service ! The fact that we can nc^ longer make active resistance has already been postulated by us as obvious, and is admitted by everyone. Now, how can we justify the continuance of our forfeited existence against the reproach of cow ardice and of an unworthy love of life ? In no other way than by deciding not to live for ourselves, and by proving this in action ; by being willing to make ourselves the seed of a more worthy posterity and, for its sake alone, to maintain ourselves until we have set it up. Deprived of that chief aim in life, what can we do ? Our constitu tions will be made for us ; our alliances and the employ ment of our fighting forces will be prescribed to us ; a code of law will be given to us ; even justice and judg ment and their administration will sometimes be taken from us. For the immediate future we shall be spared the trouble of these matters. It is only of education that no one has thought ; if we are looking for an occu pation, let us seize this! Wgjnay__expect to be left in it undisturbed. I hope perhaps I deceive myself in this, but as I care to live only for that hope, I cannot give up hoping I hope that I shall convince some THE CARRYING-OUT OF THE SCHEME 193 Germans, and get them to see that it is education alone that can save us from all the ills that oppress us. I rely especially on necessity having made us more inclined to attention and to serious reflection. Other countries have other consolations and other resources ; it is not to be expected that they will give any attention to the thought of education, or have any faith in it, should it ever occur to them. I hope rather that it will be a rich source of amusement to the readers of their papers, when they learn that anyone expects such great things from education. 169. May the State and its advisers not let themselves become more loath to take up this task by the considera tion that the result hoped for is remote ! If among the numerous and highly complicated reasons for our present fate one wanted to single out that for which our govern ments alone are peculiarly to blame, it would be found that, although they above all others are bound to look the future in the face and master it, they have never tried, in spite of the urgency of the great events of their time, to do more than get out of the difficulty of the immediate moment as well as they could. In regard to the future, however, they have reckoned, not on their present age, but on some piece of good luck which should sever the fixed chain of cause and effect. But such hopes are deceptive. A motive power which is once allowed to enter the flow of time continues and completes its course ; once the first careless act has been committed, belated reflection cannot arrest it. Our fate has for the moment removed from us the possibility of making the first mistake, that of providing merely for the present ; the present is no longer ours. Let us not repeat the second, that of hoping for a better future from anything but ourselves. Indeed, the present can afford no con- I 9 4 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION solation for the duty to live to any one of us who requires for life something more than food ; the hope of a better future is the only atmosphere in which we can still breathe. But only the dreamer can base this hope on anything but what he himself can plant in the present for the development of a future. Let those who rule over us permit us to think as well of them as we do of each other, and as the better man feels ! Let them put themselves at the head of the business that is to us, too, quite clear, so that we may yet see arising before our eyes that which will some day wipe from our memory the shame that has been done to the German name before our eyes ! 170. If the State undertakes the proposed task, it will make this education universal throughout the length and breadth of its domain for every one of its future citizens without exception. Indeed, it is for that universality alone that we need the State, since for individual begin nings and isolated attempts the resources of well-disposed "private persons would suffice. Of course, it is not to be expected that all parents will be willing to be separated from their children, and to hand them over to this new education, a notion of which it will be difficult to convey to them. From past experience we must reckon that everyone who still believes he is able to support his children at home will set himself against public education, and especially against a public education that separates so strictly and lasts so long. Now, in these cases of ex pected resistance it has been customary in the past for statesmen to reject the proposal with the reply: The State has no right to use compulsion for that purpose. If they want to wait until all men have the good will, since universal goodwill will never be produced without education, they are thereby secured against all improve- THE CARRYING-OUT OF THE SCHEME 195 ment, and may expect that there will be no change until the end of time. In so far as these statesmen are among those who either consider any education an un necessary luxury, with which people should be supplied as scantily as possible, or see in our proposals only a daring new experiment with humanity, which may or may not succeed, they are to be praised for their con scientiousness. Those who are filled with admiration for the existing state of public education and with de light at the perfection which it has reached under their direction cannot really be expected now to agree with something which they do not already know. Not one of them is of any use for our purpose, and it would be deplorable if the decision in this matter were to rest with them. But statesmen might be found and consulted on this matter who, above all things, have educated them selves by a deep and thorough study of philosophy and science, who are in real earnest about their business, have a definite idea of man and of his vocation, and are capable of understanding the present and of judging what is absolutely necessary for mankind at this time. If such men perceived from those preliminary conceptions that education alone can save us from the barbarism and relapse into savagery that is otherwise bound to over whelm us, if they had a vision of the new human race which would arise through this education, if they were themselves inwardly convinced of the infallibility and certainty of the proposed remedy, they might be expected to have realized at the same time that the State, as the supreme administrator of human affairs and the guardian of those who are its wards, responsible only to God and to its own conscience, has a perfect right even to compel the latter for their welfare. For where is there a State to-day which doubts whether it has the right to compel 196 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION its subjects to military service, and for that purpose to take away children from parents, whether one parent or both be willing or unwilling ? Yet this compulsion to adopt permanently a certain mode of life against one s will is far more serious, and has frequently the most harmful results to the moral condition, health, and life of those who are so compelled. On the other hand, the compulsion of which we speak restores complete personal freedom when education is finished, and can have none but the most salutary results. It is true that even mili tary service was formerly voluntary ; but, when it was discovered that this was not sufficient for the purpose intended, we did not scruple to back it up by compulsion, because the matter was sufficiently important for us, and necessity demanded compulsion. If only in regard to education, too, our eyes were opened to our need and the matter became as important to us, that hesitation would vanish of itself ; especially as compulsion will be needed only in the first generation and will vanisTTin the next, which will itself have passed through this education. Moreover, compulsory military service, too, will thereby be ended, because those who are thus educated are all equally willing to bear arms for their fatherland. Even if, in order not to have too much of an outcry at the beginning, it is desirable to limit this compulsion to public education in the same way as compulsion to military service has hitherto been limited, and to exclude from the former the classes that are exempt from the latter, no serious harm will result. The intelligent parents among those exempted will voluntarily hand over their children to this education. The children of the unintelligent parents of these classes, an insignificant minority, may continue to grow up as before. They will survive among the better generation that is to be created, and serve THE CARRYING-OUT OF THE SCHEME 197 merely as a curious memorial of the past, and to encourage the new age to a vivid knowledge of its greater good fortune. 171. Now, this education is to be national education of the Germans simply ; and the great majority of those who speak the German language, and not just the citizens of this or that particular German State only, are to exist as a new race of men. Every German State, therefore, must undertake this task for itself, and independently of all the others. The language in which this matter was first mentioned, in which the means thereto are and will be written, in which the teachers are trained, the one vein of sensuous imagery that permeates all this is common to all Germans. I can scarcely imagine how and with what changes all these means of education, especially to the full extent of our scheme, could be translated into the language of any foreign country so as to seem, not an alien transplanted thing, but a native product arising from the very life of its language. For all Germans alike this difficulty is removed ; for them the thing is ready ; they need only avail themselves of it. 172. In this respect it is well for us, indeed, that there are various German States separated from one another. What has so often been to our disadvantage may perhaps in this important national business serve to our advantage. The rivalry of several States and the desire to anticipate one another may perhaps bring about what the calm self-sufficiency of the single State would not produce. For it is clear that, whichever German State makes a start in this matter, that State will win for itself the chief place in the respect, love, and gratitude of all, and will rank as the greatest benefactor and the true founder of the nation. It will encourage the others, set them an instructive example, and be their model. It will remove 198 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION doubts which hold the others fast. It will produce the textbooks and the first teachers, and lend them to the others. The State that follows it next will win the second place of honour. There is gratifying evidence that among the Germans the taste for higher things has never quite died out, for several German peoples and States have striven with one another for the honour of having the higher culture. Some have claimed to have more exten sive freedom of the press and greater disregard for tradi tional opinion, others better organized schools and universities ; some have cited former glory and merit, others something else ; and the strife could not be de cided. On the present occasion it will be decided. Only that education which dares to make itself universal and to include all men without distinction is a real part of life and is sure of itself. Any other is foreign trimming, put on simply for show and not even worn with right good conscience. It will now be revealed where the boasted culture exists only in a few people of the middle class, who show it in their writings (and such people are to be found in every German State), and where, on the other hand, it has reached also the higher classes who advise the State. Then it will be shown, too, how one has to judge the zeal displayed here and there for the erection and welfare of institutions for higher education ; whether the motive was pure love of educating mankind, which would indeed treat with equal zeal every branch of educa tion and especially the very first foundation, or mere passion for showing off and, perhaps, paltry schemes for making money. 173. The first German State to carry out this pro posal will, I said, have the greatest glory. Yet it will not long stand alone, but will doubtless soon find imi tators and rivals. The important thing is to make a THE CARRYING-OUT OF THE SCHEME 199 start. Even if there were no other motive, a sense of honour, or jealousy, or the desire to have what another possesses and, if possible, to have it in a better form, will spur on the rest to follow the example one after the other. Then, too, the above-mentioned considerations concerning the State s own advantage, which perhaps seem doubtful to many just now, will become more obvious, once they are proved by personal observation. If it could be expected that every German State would " at once, and from this very hour, make serious prepara tions to carry out that scheme, the better generation that we need would be in existence in twenty-five years, and anyone who might expect to live so long could hope to see it with his own eyes. 174. But we must also take this contingency into } account. Among all the German States that now exist, j there might not be a single one which had among its i highest advisers a man capable of understanding, and of being affected by, all that has been mentioned above, and in which the majority of the counsellors did not at any rate oppose him. In that case, of course, this business would devolve upon well-disposed private persons, and it would be desirable that they should make a start with the proposed new education. We have in mind here, first of all, great landowners, who could establish on their estates such educational institutions for the children of their dependents. It is to Germany s credit, and a very honourable mark of distinction from the other nations of modern Europe, that among the class mentioned there have always been some here and there, who made it their serious business to care for the instruction and education of the children on their estates, and were gladly willing to do for them to the best of their know ledge. It is to be hoped that they will now be inclined 200 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION to inform themselves about the complete scheme that is offered them, and be just as willing to do now on a large scale and thoroughly what they have hitherto done on a small scale and imperfectly. It may be that some of them did what they did partly because they saw that it was more profitable for them to have educated, rather than uneducated, dependents. In those cases where the State, by abolishing the relationship of serf and lord, has now removed the latter motive, may it bear in mind the more earnestly that it is its essential duty at the same time not to do away with the one blessing which, where the lords were well-disposed, was attached to that relationship ! May the State in this case not fail to do that which, apart from this, is its duty, when it has released therefrom those who did it voluntarily in its stead ! Then, in regard to the cities, we look to volun tary associations formed for that purpose by well-disposed citizens. So far as I have been able to see, no burden of misery has ever yet extinguished in German hearts the impulse to do good. Yet, owing to a number of faults in our institutions, which could all be included under the one head of neglected education, these good works seldom remove misery, but seem, indeed, often to increase it. May we at last direct that excellent impulse chiefly towards the good work which puts an end to all misery and to all need of further good works the good work of education. Yet we need, and count upon, a blessing and sacrifice of another kind, which consists, not in giving, but in doing and acting. May budding scholars, whose position allows it, dedicate the time between their departure from the university and their appointment to a public post to the business of receiving instruction in these institutions concerning this method of teaching, and of teaching in them ! Apart from the THE CARRYING-OUT OF THE SCHEME 201 fact that they will thereby deserve well of the community, we can assure them that they will themselves gain very much. All the knowledge which they carry away with them from the usual university teaching, and which is often so dead, will become clear and living in the atmos phere of general observation into which they come here. They will learn to reproduce and use their knowledge with skill. Since all the features of mankind appear pure and clear in the child, they will acquire a store of true knowledge of mankind that alone deserves the name ; they will be introduced to the great art of life and action, in which the university usually gives no instruction. 175. If the State does not undertake the proffered task/ so much the greater glory for the private persons who do. Far be it from us to anticipate the future with surmises, or strike the note of doubt and distrust. We have stated clearly what we wish for first. We may, however, be- permitted to say that, if the State and the princes should in fact leave the matter to private persons, this would be in accordance with the usual course of German develop- ment and culture, which has been already mentioned and proved by examples, and which would continue so to the end. In this case, too, the State will follow in its own time ; at first like an individual, wanting just to do its part, until later it reflects that it is not a part, but the whole, and that it is its duty, as well as its right, - to care for the whole. From that moment onwards, all the independent efforts of private persons cease and are subordinated to the State s general scheme. Should the matter take this course, the intended refor mation of our race will certainly proceed but slowly, and without the possibility of a definite and fixed survey and estimate of the whole. But let us not be deterred by this from making a start ! It is the very nature of the thing 202 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION that it can never perish, but, once set in motion, it lives on of itself and spreads, ever gaining fresh ground. Every one who has received this education becomes a witness for it and a zealous propagator. Everyone will pay his debt for the teaching received by becoming a teacher himself, and by making as many disciples as he can, who will also in turn some day become teachers. This must continue until the whole community without exception is affected. 176. If the State should not undertake the matter, private enterprise has this to fear ; that those parents who are at all well-to-do will not give up their children to this education. In that case, in God s name let us turn with full confidence to the poor orphans, to the wretched street-children, and to all those whom the adult world has cast out and rejected. Formerly, especially in those German States where the piety of ancestors had greatly increased and richly endowed the public educational institutions, many parents let their families have instruction, because along with it, as in no other occupation, they found maintenance at the same time. Let us, therefore, since it is necessary, reverse this order, and give bread to those to whom no one else gives it, in order that, along with the bread, they may receive mental culture also. Let us not fear that the misery and wildness of their former condition will hinder our purpose ! If only we snatch them away from it suddenly and completely, bring them into an entirely new world, and leave nothing to remind them of the past, they will themselves forget and be like newly-created beings. Our course of instruction and daily routine must guarantee that only good is engraven on this clean new tablet. It will be a testimony against our age and a warning to all posterity if the very ones whom it has THE CARRYING-OUT OF THE SCHEME 203 rejected obtain through this rejection the sole privilege of founding a new race, if they bring the blessing of educa tion to the children of those who would not mix with them, and if they become the ancestors of our future heroes, sages, lawgivers, and saviours of mankind. 177. For the first establishment capable teachers and educators above all are needed. Pestalozzi s school has trained such people, and is always ready to train more. An important thing to keep in mind at the beginning will be that every institution of the kind should regard itself also as a training school for teachers, where, round the teachers who are already trained, a number of young men may gather to learn and, at the same time, to practise teaching, and by practice to learn it better and better. This, too, will greatly facilitate the supply of teachers, in case the institutions have at first to struggle against poverty. Most of them will be there to learn ; let the sole return asked of them be to apply for a time what they have learnt to the benefit of the institution where they learnt it. Moreover, such an institution needs a building, initial equipment, and an adequate piece of land. It seems evident that, as these institutions develop, they will contain a relatively large number of growing youths of an age at which, under the existing arrangement, they earn as servants not only their maintenance but also a yearly wage. To these the children of more tender age can be entrusted, and by diligence and wise economy, which in any case are necessary, these institutions will be mainly self-supporting. At first, so long as there are none of these older pupils, the institutions will need rather large contributions. It is to be hoped that people will be more disposed to make contributions, when they see the prospect of an end to them. Let us not be parsi- 2o 4 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION monious, and so prejudice the aim. It is far better that we should do nothing at all than permit this. My opinion, therefore, is that, goodwill alone pre supposed, the realization of this scheme presents no difficulty that could not easily be overcome by the com bination of several people, and by the directing of all their strength to this one purpose. TWELFTH ADDRESS CONCERNING THE MEANS FOR OUR PRESERVATION UNTIL WE ATTAIN OUR MAIN OBJECT 178. THE education which we propose to the Germans as their future national education has now been suffi ciently described. When once the generation that has been formed by this education is in existence a genera tion impelled by its taste for the right and the good and by nothing else whatever ; a generation provided with an understanding that is adequate for its standpoint and recognizes the right unfailingly on every occasion ; a generation equipped with full power, both physical and spiritual, to carry out its will on every occasion when once this generation is in existence, everything that we can long for in our boldest wishes will come into being of itself from the very existence of that generation, and will grow out of it naturally. That age is in so little need of any rules we can make for its guidance that we should rather have to learn from it. Since this generation is in the meantime not in exis tence, but must first be raised up by education, and since, even if everything else should go on excellently and beyond our expectation, we shall nevertheless require a consider able interval before we pass over to that new age, the more urgent question arises : How are we to manage to get through this interval ? Since we can do nothing 205 206 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION better, how are we to maintain ourselves at any rate as the soil on which the improvement may take place, and as the point of departure at which this improvement may begin its work ? When once the generation formed in this way emerges from its seclusion and appears among us, how are we to prevent it from finding among us actual conditions that have not the slightest relationship to the order of things which it has conceived as embodying the right actual conditions under which no one under stands it or has the slightest wish for, or need of, such an order of things, but, on the contrary, regards the existing state of things as entirely natural and the only one possible ? Would not those who have another world in their hearts soon become confused ; and in this case would not the new education be just as useless for the improvement of actual life as the former education, and lose its savour in the same way ? 179. If the majority of people continue in their previous state of heedlessness, thoughtlessness, and lack of concentration, this very result may be expected as inevitable. He who lets himself go without paying heed to himself, and allows himself to be moulded by circum stances just as they please, soon accustoms himself to any possible order of things. However much his eye may have been offended by something when he first saw it, let it only present itself anew every day in .the same way and he accustoms himself to it. Later, he finds it natural, and in the end he even gets to like it as something inevit able ; he would not thank you for the restoration of the original and better state of things, because this would tear him out of the mode of life to which he has become accustomed. In this way men become accustomed even to slavery, if only their material existence is not thereby affected, and in time they get to like it. It is just this MEANS FOR OUR PRESERVATION 207 that is the most dangerous thing about a state of subjection; it makes men insensitive to all true honour, and, more over, for the indolent man it has its very pleasant side, because it relieves him of many a care and of the need of thinking for himself. 1 80. Let us be on our guard against being taken un awares by this sweetness of servitude, for it robs even our posterity of the hope of future emancipation. If our external activity is restricted and fettered, let us elevate our spirit all the more boldly to the thought of freedom ; let us rise to live in this thought and make it the sole object of our wish and longing. What if freedom dis appear for a time from the visible world ? Let us give it a place of refuge in our innermost thoughts, until there shall grow up round about us the new world which has the power of manifesting our thoughts outwardly. In the sphere where no one can deprive us of the freedom to do as we think best in our own minds let us make ourselves a pattern, a prophecy, and a guarantee of that which will become a reality when we are gone. Let us not allow our spirit, as well as our body, to be bent and subjected and brought into captivity. 181. If you ask me how this is to be brought about, the only entirely comprehensive answer is this : We must at once become what we ought to be in any case, namely, Germans. We are not to subject our spirit ; therefore we must before all things provide a spirit for ourselves, and a firm and certain spirit ; we must become earnest in all things and not go on existing frivolously, as if life were a jest ; we must form for ourselves enduring and\ unshakable principles which will serve as a sure guide \ for all the rest of our thoughts and actions. Life and thought with us must be of one piece and a solid and\ interpenetrating whole ; in both we must live according 208 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION to nature and truth, and throw away foreign contrivances ; in a word, we must provide character for ourselves ; for to have character and to be German [Charakter haben und deutsch sein] undoubtedly mean the same ; and the thing has no special name in our language, because it is intended to proceed immediately from our very existence without any knowledge or reflection on our part. 182. We must first of all set our own thoughts to work and think about the great events of our days, their relation to us, and what we have to expect from them ; and we must provide ourselves with a firm and clear view of all these matters, and a definite and unchangeable Yes or No in answer to the questions that arise out of them. Everyone who makes the slightest claim to culture is bound to do that. The animal life of man proceeds in all ages according to the same laws, and in this every age is alike. Only to the understanding are there such things as different ages ; and only the man whose conception penetrates them lives in them, and only he exists in his own age ; any other kind of life is nothing but the life of plants and animals. To let everything that happens pass by one unperceived, perhaps to close eye and ear diligently to its urgent message, and even to boast of such thoughtlessness as if it were great wisdom this may be the proper thing for a rock on which the waves of the sea beat without its feeling them, or for a tree-trunk dashed to and fro by storms without its perceiving them ; but in no wise does it beseem a thinking being. Even the thinker who dwells in the higher spheres is not absolved from this general obligation of understanding his own age. Everything that is on the higher plane must want to influence the immediate present in its own fashion ; and he who truly lives in the former lives at the same time in the latter also ; if he did not live in the latter MEANS FOR OUR PRESERVATION 209 also, it would be a proof that he did not live in the former either, but only dreamed in it. That lack of heed to what is going on before our eyes, and the artful dis traction to other objects of the attention that is everywhere aroused, would be the best thing that an enemy of our independence could wish to find. If he is sure that nothing will set us thinking, he can do anything he wishes with us, as if we were lifeless tools. It is precisely this thoughtlessness that accustoms itself to anything ; but where clear and comprehensive thought, and in that thought the image of what ought to be, always remains watchful, there is no question of becoming accustomed to such things. 183. These addresses have in the first place invited you, and they will invite the whole German nation, in so far as it is possible at the present time to assemble the nation around a speaker by means of the printed book, to come to a definite decision and to be at one with themselves in their own minds on the following questions : (1) Whether it is true or untrue that there is a German nation, and that its continued existence in its peculiar and independent nature is at the present time in danger ; (2) Whether it is worth the trouble, or not worth the trouble, to maintain this nation ; (3) Whether there is any sure and thorough means of maintaining it, and what this means is. 184. It was hitherto a custom of long standing among us that, when any earnest word was uttered, either to an audience or in print, those who never got beyond polite conversation took possession of the word and transformed it into an amusing subject of talk to relieve their boredom. Now, I have not noticed, as I have on former occasions, that those around me have made such a use of the addresses I am now delivering ; but I have not 14 210 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION acquainted myself with the current tone of the social gatherings in the field of books I mean the literary papers and other journals and I do not know whether they may be expected to take me in joke or in earnest. However this may be, it has at any rate not been my intention to joke, or to set in motion once more the wit which this age of ours is known to possess. 185. A custom that took deeper root among us and became almost second nature so much so that not to observe it was almost unheard-of was that the Germans regarded the introduction of any topic as an invitation to everyone who had a mouth to have his own say about it, quickly and on the spot, and to inform us whether he was of the same opinion or not ; and when the vote had been taken in this way the whole thing was over, and public conversation felt bound to proceed with haste to another subject. In this way all literary discussion among the Germans transformed itself, like Echo in the ancient fable, into nothing but pure sound, without any body or bodily substance. We know how it is in the personal intercourse of third-rate society, and so it was in this literary fellowship ; the only thing that mattered was that the human voice should go on sounding, and that each one should take up the ball of conversation and with out a pause throw it to his neighbour ; but what was said did not matter in the least. Now, if that is not being without character and un-German, what is ? Nor has it been my intention to do homage to this custom and merely keep alive public discussion. I have long ago sufficiently performed my own share in this public conversation though only incidentally, my purpose having been different and I think I might at last be absolved from any further contribution. I do not want to know on the spot what A or B thinks about the questions MEANS FOR OUR PRESERVATION 211 that have been raised here, i.e., what he has hitherto thought about them, or not thought. He must consider it for himself and think deeply about it, until his judg ment is ready and completely clear, and he must take the necessary time for that purpose ; if he is still lacking in the requisite preliminary knowledge, and in the full degree of culture that is required before a judgment can be formed in these matters, he must further take time to make good these deficiencies. If anyone has his judgment ready and clear in this way, we do not exactly insist that he shall deliver it publicly. Should it agree with what has been said here well, it has been said already and does not need saying twice. Only he who can say something different and better is called upon to speak. On the other hand, what has been said here must be really lived and put into practice by each one in his own way and according to his own circumstances. 1 86. Least of all, in conclusion, has it been my inten tion to lay these addresses as an exercise in composition before our German masters of doctrine and writing, so that they may correct them and I may learn in this way what promise, if any, there is in my work. In this respect also plenty of good doctrine and advice has already been directed towards me and, if improvement were to be expected, it ought to have shown itself by now. 187. No, my intention in the first place was to be a guide among the swarm of questions and investigations and the host of contradictory opinions concerning them, in which educated men among us have hitherto been tossed about, and to lead as many men as I could to a point where they might take a firm stand, to the point which concerns us most intimately the point of our own common interests. My intention was to bring them in this one matter to a firm opinion which might remain 212 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION unshaken, and to a clearness in which they might really see their way. However much else might be a matter of ! dispute among them, my intention was to unite them in \this one matter at least, and to make them of one mind. j It was my intention, finally, to bring this out as one certain characteristic of the German, viz., that he is a man who has appreciated the need of forming an opinion for himself about that which concerns Germans ; and to make it clear that a man who does not want to hear or to think anything about this subject may rightly be regarded, from now on, as not belonging to us. 1 88. The creation of a firm opinion of this kind, and the association and mutual comprehension of divers persons on this subject, will do two things. It will be the direct means of redeeming our character, by removing that lack of concentration which is so unworthy of us, and at the same time it will become a powerful means of attaining our main object, the introduction of the new national education. It was just because we ourselves, individually and collectively, were never of one opinion, but wanted one thing to-day and something different tomorrow, and because each one made the clamour more confused by shouting something different it was for this reason that our governments, who to be sure listened to us, and often listened more attentively than was advisable, became confused and swayed to and fro just like our own opinion. If our common affairs are at last to pursue a firm and certain course, what is there to prevent us from beginning at once with ourselves and setting the example of firmness and decision ? When once a united and unchanging opinion makes itself heard, when a definite need announces itself as a general need and makes itself felt the need of a national education, as we assume it will be I am quite sure that our governments MEANS FOR OUR PRESERVATION 213 will listen to us ; they will help us, if we show the inclina tion to allow ourselves to be helped. At any rate, if they did not, we would then, and not before, have the right to complain about them ; at the present time, when our governments are pretty much as we want them to be, it ill becomes us to complain. 189. Whether there is a sure and thorough means of preserving the German nation, and what this means may be, is the most important of the questions which I have submitted to this nation for decision. My object in answering the question, and in stating the reasons for my way of answering it, was not to say what the final judgment will be that could not be of any use, because everyone who is to have a hand in this matter must have convinced himself in his own mind by his own activity on the con trary, my object was only to stimulate men to reflect for themselves and form their own judgment. From this point onwards I must leave each man to settle it for himself. One warning I can give and nothing more ; do not let yourselves be deceived by the shallow and superficial thoughts which are in circulation even on this subject ; do not let yourselves be restrained from deep reflection, and do not accept the empty consolations that are offered. 190. For example, long before the most recent events, we had to hear, in advance as it were, a saying which since then has frequently been repeated in our ears : that even if our political independence were lost we should still keep our language and our literature, and thereby always remain a nation ; so we could easily console ourselves for the loss of everything else. But, first of all, what basis is there for hoping that we shall keep our language even if we lose our political independence ? Surely those who say this do not ascribe this miraculous power to their own persuasions 214 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION and admonitions when addressed to their children, their children s children, and to all the centuries to come. Those men now living and mature, who have accustomed themselves to speaking, writing, and reading in the German language, will no doubt go on doing so ; but what will the next generation do, and, more important still, the third generation ? What counterpoise do we propose to place in the hearts of these generations that will hold the scale against their desire to please, by speech and writing, the race with which all glory rests and which has all favours to distribute ? Have we, then, never heard of a language l which is the first in the world, although it is known that the first works in that language are still to be written ; and do we not already see before our eyes that writings are appearing in it by whose con tents the authors hope to find favour ? The example of two other languages is brought forward in support, one of the ancient and one of the modern world, which, in spite of the political destruction of the peoples who spoke them, continued to exist as living languages. I do not intend even to examine the manner in which they have continued to exist ; but this much is clear at first sight, that both languages had something in them which ours does not possess, and by means of this they found favour with their conquerors, which our language can never find. If these vain comforters had looked about them better, they would have found another example which, in our opinion, is entirely to the point here, viz., the language of the Wends. This, too, has continued to exist during all the centuries in wriich the people that speaks it has been deprived of its freedom it exists, that 1 [Fichte seems here to be referring ironically to French and to those Germans who were writing in that language in order to curry favour with Napoleon.] MEANS FOR OUR PRESERVATION 217 is to say, in the wretched hovels of the serf bound to the soil, so that he may bemoan his fate in his own language which his oppressor does not understand. But let us suppose that our language remains a living and a literary language and so preserves its literature ; what sort of literature can that be, the literature of a people without political independence ? What does a" sensible writer want, and what can he want ? Nothing else but to influence public life and the life of all, and to form and reshape it according to his vision ; and if he does not want to do this, everything he says is empty sound to tickle the ears of the indolent. He wants to think originally and from the root of spiritual life for those who act just as originally, i.e., govern. He can, therefore, only write in a language in which the governors think, in a language in which the work of government is carried on, in the language of a people that forms an independent State. For what is the ultimate aim of all our efforts even in regard to the most abstract sciences ? Admitting that the immediate objects of these efforts is to propagate the science from generation to generation and to maintain it in the world, the question arises : Why should it be maintained ? Obviously only in order to shape the life of all and the whole human order of things when the right time comes. That is its ultimate object ; hence, every effort in science indirectly serves the State, though it may be only in a remote future. If it abandons this aim, it loses its worth and its independence. But he who sets this aim before him must write in the language of the dominant race. 191. Just as it is true beyond doubt that, wherever a[ separate language is found, there a separate nation exists, \ which has the right to take independent charge of its affairs and to govern itself ; so one can say, on the other 214 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION hand, that, where a people has ceased to govern itself, it is equal]y bound to give up its language and to coalesce with its conquerors, in order that there may be unity and internal peace and complete oblivion of relationships which no longer exist. Even a semi-intelligent leader of such a mixture of races must insist on this ; and we may be quite sure that in our case the insistence will not be lacking. Until this amalgamation has taken place, approved school-books will be translated into the lan guage of the barbarians, i.e., those who are too stupid to learn the language of the dominant race, and who thereby exclude themselves from all influence on public affairs and condemn themselves to lifelong subjection. These persons, who have sentenced themselves to silence con cerning actual events, will be permitted to exercise their oratorical skill on the disputes of a fictitious world, or to imitate in their own way obsolete and ancient forms ; proofs of the former condition may be found in the case of the ancient language that was cited above as an example, and of the latter in the case of the modern language. Such a literature we might perhaps retain for some time yet ; and with such a literature let him console himself who has no better consolation. But, as to those who might be capable of playing the man, of seeing the truth, and of becoming aroused by the sight of it to decision and action that they should be kept in indolent slumber by such a worthless consolation, which would be the very thing to serve the purpose of an enemy of our independence, that is what I should like to prevent if I could. 192. So we are promised the continuance of a German literature for future generations ! In order to form a better judgment of the hopes that we can entertain in this matter, it would be very profitable to look about us and see whether we still have at this moment a German MEANS FOR OUR PRESERVATION 217 literature in the true sense of the word. The noblest privilege and the most sacred function of the man of letters is this : to assemble his nation and to take counsel with it about its most important affairs. But especially in Germany this has always been the exclusive function of the man of letters, because Germany was split up into several separate States, and was held together as a common whole almost solely by the instrumentality of the man of letters, by speech and writing. In the most special and urgent way does it become his function at the present time, now that the last external bond which united the Germans, the imperial constitution, has also been de stroyed. If it should now be evident we are not speaking here of something we know or fear, but only of a possible case, which we must nevertheless take into consideration in advance if it should, I say, be evident that State officials in the separate States were already so obsessed by anxiety, fear, and terror, that they first forbade such voices to make themselves heard or prohibited the spreading of the message, voices which assumed that a nation was still in existence and addressed themselves to it ; then, that would be a proof that we already had no German men of letters at work, and w r e should know what our prospects would be for any literature in the future. 193. Now, what could it be that these people are afraid of ? Perhaps that this man or that will not be pleased to hear voices of that kind. Then, at any rate they would have chosen the time badly for their tender consideration. Pamphlets libelling and degrading the fatherland, insipid praises of what is foreign, they are plainly unable to prevent ; then let them not be so strict against a word for the fatherland which makes itself rjprd in between. It is quite possible that all are not equally 2i 8 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION willing to hear all things ; but at this time we cannot concern ourselves with that ; we are urged on by necessity, and we must say just what necessity orders us to say. We are fighting for life ; do they want us to walk delicately, lest some robe of state be covered with the dust we may raise ? We are sinking in the water-floods ; are we to refrain from calling for help, lest some weak-nerved neighbour may be alarmed ? 194. For, who are they who might not like to hear it, and on what condition might they not like to hear it ? In every case it is only obscurity and darkness which cause alarm. Every terrifying vision vanishes when one gazes at it firmly. With the same unconcern and direct ness, with which we have hitherto analysed every subject that has occurred in these addresses, let us look this terror, too, in the face. We must assume either that the being 1 to whom at the present time the conduct of a great part of the world s affairs has fallen is a truly great soul, or we must assume the contrary ; no third assumption is possible. In the first case : on what is all human greatness based, if not on the independence and originality of the person and on the fact that the person is not an artificial product of his age, but a growth out of the eternal and spontaneous spirit-world, which has grown up just as it is ? Is not greatness based on the fact that to one person a new and individual view of the universe has dawned, and that this person has the firm will and the iron strength to impose his view on the actual world ? But it is quite impossible for such a soul not to honour in peoples and individuals external to himself that in which his own internal great ness consists, viz., independence, constancy, and indivi duality of existence. In proportion as the great soul feels 1 [Napoleon.] MEANS FOR OUR PRESERVATION 219 sure of his own greatness and trusts thereto, he disdains to rule over a people with a wretched servile spirit or to be a giant among dwarfs ; he disdains the thought that he must first degrade men in order to rule over them ; he is oppressed by the sight of degeneration round about him. Not to be able to respect men causes him pain ; but every thing that elevates and ennobles his brother men and places them in a worthier light is a cause of satisfaction to his own noble spirit and is his greatest delight. Are we to believe that such a soul would note with displeasure that the upheavals which the present times have brought about are being used to arouse an ancient and honourable nation from its deep slumber a nation that is the stem from which most of the peoples of modern Europe have sprung, and which is the creator of them all and to induce it to lay hold of a sure means of preservation in order to raise itself from ruin a means which ensures at the same time that it will never sink again, and that it will raise all the other peoples along with itself ? We are here not inciting people to riotous measures ; we are rather warning people against them as sure to lead to ruin. We are , pointing out a firm and unchangeable foundation, on which the highest and purest morality, such as was never yet seen among men, may be built up at last for the world in one people and assured for all time to come, and which may thence be spread abroad among all other peoples. We are pointing the way to a regeneration of the human race, a way to turn earthly and sensuous creatures into pure and noble spirits. Does anyone think that such a proposal could be felt as an insult by a mind that is itself pure and noble and great, or by anyone who forms him self after that pattern ? What, on the other hand, would be the assumption of those who entertained this fear and admitted it by 220 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION their actions, and what would they proclaim to all the world as their assumption ? They would acknowledge that they believed we were ruled over by an enemy of mankind, by a very base and petty Principle, alarmed by every stirring of independent strength and unable to hear of morality, religion, or ennoblement of souls without anxiety; because nothing but the degradation of men, their stupor, and their vices would make his position safe and give him hope of maintaining himself. With this belief of theirs, which would add to our other miseries the crushing shame of being ruled over by such a man as this, are we now forthwith to proclaim ourselves in agree ment, and are we to act in accordance with it before we have clear proof that it is true ? Let us suppose the worst : that they are in the right and not we, who show by our action that we make the former assumption. Is, then, the human race really to be degraded and to go under as a favour to one man who profits by the fall and to those who are afraid ? Is one, whose heart bids him do it, not to be allowed to warn them of destruction ? Suppose, not only that they were in the right, but that one should resolve, in the sight of this generation and of posterity, to admit that they were right and to deliver aloud on one s self the judgment just expressed ; what, then, would be the greatest ultimate consequence for the unwelcome warner ? Do they know anything greater than death ? This awaits us all in any case, and from the beginning of humanity noble souls have defied the danger of death for the sake of less important matters for when was there ever a higher matter than the present one ? Who has the right to intervene in an undertaking that is begun with full knowledge of this danger ? 195. Should there be such people though I hope not MEANS FOR OUR PRESERVATION 221 among us Germans, they would offer their necks without invitation, without thanks, and, as I hope, without find ing acceptance, to the yoke of spiritual serfdom. They would bitterly revile their own country in flattering its oppressor ; they would think that diplomatic, for they do not know the mind of true greatness, but measure its thoughts by the thoughts suggested by their own petti ness ; thus they would make use of literature, for which they know no other use, to pay their court by slaughtering it as a sacrificial victim. We, on the other hand, praise the greatness of the soul, with whom power lies, much more by the fact of our confidence and our courage than words could ever do. Throughout the entire domain of the whole German language, wherever our voice rings out free and unrestrained, it thus invokes Germans by the very fact of its existence : No one wants your oppression, your servility, your slavish subjection ; but your indepen dence, your true freedom, your elevation, and your ennoblement are wanted ; for it is not forbidden to discuss these things openly with you and to show you the infall ible means of attaining them. If this voice finds a hear ing and has the result intended, it will set up a memorial of this greatness, and of our faith in it, for all centuries to come a memorial which time cannot destroy, but which will grow greater, and spread more widely, with each new generation. Who dares to set himself against the attempt to erect such a memorial ? So, instead of consoling ourselves for the loss of our independence with the promise of a period of bloom for our literature in the future, and instead of allowing our selves to be deterred by consolations of that kind from seeking a means to restore our independence, we prefer to ask whether those Germans, to whom a kind of guardian ship of literature has fallen, still allow, even in these days, 222 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION a literature in the true sense of the word to the other Germans who themselves write and read, and whether they consider that such a literature is still allowed in Germany or not. But some decision will shortly have to be made as to what they really think about it. 196. After all, the first thing that we have to do, in order merely to maintain ourselves in existence until the time comes for the complete and thorough regeneration of our race, is this ; to provide ourselves with character, and to prove it first of all by thinking for ourselves and so forming a firm opinion of our true situation and of the sure means of improving it. The worthlessness of the consolation to be derived from the continued exis tence of our language and literature has been demon strated. There are, however, other delusive views which have not yet been mentioned in these addresses, and which hinder the formation of that firm opinion. It is appro priate to our purpose to consider these views as well ; but we reserve this subject for the next address. THIRTEENTH ADDRESS 1 THE SAME SUBJECT FURTHER CONSIDERED 197. AT the end of the preceding address we said that there were in circulation among us a number of worth less thoughts and deceptive theories as to the affairs of peoples, and that this prevented the Germans from forrrftng such a definite view of their present situation as would .be in accordance with their own special char acteristics. As these vain phantoms are being held up for public veneration with great zeal just at present, and as they might be embraced by many people now that so much else has begun to topple over, solely in order to fill up the places that have become vacant, it seems appro priate to our purpose to subject these phantoms to a more serious examination than their intrinsic importance would deserve. 198. To begin with and before all things : the first7 original, and truly natural boundaries of States are beyond doubt their internal boundaries. Those who speak the same language are joined to each other by a multitude of invisible bonds by nature herself, long before any human art begins ; they understand each other 1 [Fichte s manuscript of this address, after having received the imprimatur at the censor s office in Berlin, was mislaid and lost. As Fichte had meanwhile burnt the loose sheets which he had used in preparing the address, he was compelled to rewrite it as best he could.] 223 224 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION j and have the power of continuing to make themselves understood more and more clearly ; they belong to gether and are by nature one and an inseparable whole. Such a whole, if it wishes to absorb and mingle with itself any other people of different descent and language, cannot do so without itself becoming confused, in the beginning at any rate, and violently disturbing the even progress ofJts__jui!t^er^ > From this internal boundary, which is / drawn by the spiritual nature of man himself, the marking of the external boundary by dwelling-place results as a consequence ; and in the natural view of things it is not because men dwell between certain mountains and rivers that they are a people, but, on the contrary, men dwell together and, if their luck has so arranged it, are protected by rivers and mountains because ( they were a people already by a law of nature which is much higher. 199. Thus was the German nation placed sufficiently united within itself by a common language and a common way of thinking, and sharply enough severed from the other peoples in the middle of Europe, as a wall to divide races not akin. The German nation was numerous and brave enough to protect its boundaries against any foreign attack ; it was left to itself, and by its whole way of thinking was little inclined to take notice of the neighbouring peoples, to interfere in their affairs, or to provoke them to enmity by disturbances. As time went on, a kind fortunejpreserved it fcom-dixect participation in the Conquest of other worlds that event which, more than any other7~has been the basis of the development taken by modern world-history, of the fates of peoples, and of the largest part of their ideas and opinions. Since that event, and not before, Christian Europe, which hitherto, without being clearly conscious of it, had been SAME SUBJECT FURTHER CONSIDERED 225 one, and by joint enterprises had shown itself to be one Christian Europe, I say, split itself into various separate parts. Since that event, and not before, there was a prey in sight which anyone might obtain ; and each one lusted after it in the same way, because all were able to make use of it in the same way ; and each one was envious on seeing it in the hands of another. Now, and not before, was there a reason for secret enmity and lust for war on the part of all against all. Moreover, now, and not before, did.it_become profitable for peoples to incor porate with themselves peoples of other descent and other languages, by conquest or, if that were not possible, by alliances, and to appropriate their forces. A people that has remained true to nature may have the wish, when its abode becomes too narrow for it, to enlarge it by conquest of the neighbouring soil in order to gain more room, and then it will drive out the former inhabi tants. It may have the wish to exchange a harsh and unfruitful region for a milder and more fortunate one, and in this case, too, it will drive out the former owners. It may, if it should degenerate, undertake mere pillaging raids in which, without craving after the soil or its inhabitants, it merely takes possession of every useful thing, sweeps the countries clear and then departs. Finally, it may regard the former inhabitants of the conquered soil as one of the useful things and allot them as slaves to individuals. But, for it to attach to itself V as a component part of the State the foreign population I just as it is, that will not profit it in the least, and it will J never be tempted to do so. But if the case is thus : that there is a tempting com mon prey to be fought for and to be won from an equally strong or even stronger rival ; then the calculation is different. It matters not how much or how little the 15 226 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION conquered people may blend with us ; we can at any rate make use of their fists to overcome the opponent we have to rob, and every man is welcome to us as an addition to our fighting strength. Now, suppose that some wise man, who wished for peace and quiet, had had his eyes opened to this state of affairs ; from what source could he expect quiet to come ? Obviously not from the limitation set by nature to human greed, viz., that superfluity is of no benefit to anyone ; for there was a prey which tempted everyone. Just as little could he expect peace to come from the will to set a limit to one s self ; for, where everyone grabs for himself everything that he can, anyone who limits himself must of necessity go under. No one wants to share with another what he then owns himself ; everyone wants to rob the other of what he has, if he possibly can. If one of them is quiet, it is only because he does not think himself strong enough to begin a quarrel ; he will certainly begin it as soon as he perceives the necessary strength in himself. Hence, the. only mean* of maintaining peace is this : that no one shall acquire enough power to be able to disturb the peace, and that each one shall know that there is just as much strength to resist on the other side as there is to attack on his side ; and that thus there may arise a balance and counterbalance of the total power, whereby alone, now that all other means have vanished, each one is kept in possession of what he has at present and all are kept in peace. This well-known system of a balance jrf power in Europe, therefore, assumes two things : first, a prey to which no one at all has any right, but for which all have a like desire ; and second, the universal, ever-present, and unceasingly active lust for booty. Indeed, on these assumptions, this balance of power would be the only means of maintaining peace, SAME SUBJECT FURTHER CONSIDERED 227 if only one could find the second means, namely, that of creating the equilibrium and transforming it from an empty thought into a thing of reality. 200. But were these assumptions in fact to be made universally and without any exception ? Had not the mighty German nation, in the middle of Europe, kept its hands off this prey, and was it not untainted by any craving for it, and almost incapable of making a claim to it ? If only the German nation had remained united, ~ with a common will and a common strength ! Then, though the other Europeans might have wanted to murder each other on every sea and shore, and on every island too, in the middle of Europe the firm wall of the Germans would have prevented them from reaching each other. Here peace would have remained, and the Germans would have maintained themselves, and with themselves also a part of the other European peoples, in quiet and prosperity. 20 1- Thatjjiings should remain thus did not suit the selfishness of foreign countries, whose calculations did not look more than one moment ahead. They^found German bravery useful in waging their wars and German hands useful to snatch the booty from their rivals. A means ") had to be found to attain this end, and foreign cunning I won an easy victory over German ingenuousness and lack I of suspicion. It was foreign countries which first made use of the division of mind produced by religious disputes in Germany Germany, which presented on a small scale the features of Christian Europe as a whole foreign countries, I say, made use of these disputes to break up the close inner unity of Germany into separate and disconnected parts. Foreign countries had already., destroyed their own unity naturally, by splitting into] parts over a common prey ; and now they artificially 1 228 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION destroyed German unity. Thev knew how to present each of these separate States that had thus arisen in the lap of the one nation which had no enemy except those foreign countries themselves, and no concern except the common one of setting itself with united strength against their seductive craft and cunning foreign countries, I say, knew how to present each of these States to the others as a natural enemy, against which each State must be perpetu ally on its guard. On the other hand, they knew how to make themselves appear to the German States as natural allies against the danger threatening them from their own countrymen as allies with whom alone they would themselves stand or fall, and whose enterprises they must in turn support with all their might. It was only be cause of this artificial bond that all the disputes which might arise about any matter whatever in the Old World or the New became disputes of the German races in their relation to each other. Every war, no matter what its cause, had to be fought out on German soil and with German blood ; every disturbance of the balance had to be adjusted in that nation to which the whole fountain- head of such relationships was unknown ; and the German States, whose separate existence was in itself contrary to all nature and reason, were compelled, in order ^that they might count for something, to act as make-weights to the chief forces in the scale of the European equili brium, whose movement they followed blindly and with out any will of their own. Just as in many States abroad the citizens are designated as belonging to this or that foreign party, or voting for this or that foreign alliance, but no name is found for those who belong to the party of their own country, so it was with the Germans ; for long enough they belonged only to some foreign party or other, and one seldom came across a man who sup- SAME SUBJECT FURTHER CONSIDERED 229 ported the party of the Germans and was of the opinion that this country ought to make an alliance with itself. 202. This, then, is the true origin and meaning, this the result for Germany and for the world, of that notorious doctrine of a balance of power to be artificially main tained between the European States. If Christian Europe had remained one, as it ought to be and as it originally was, there would never have been any occasion to think of such a thing. That which is one rests upon itself and supports ! itself, and does not split up into conflicting forces which^ must be brought to an equilibrium. Only when Europe became divided and without a law did the thought of a balance acquire a meaning from necessity. To ^ this Europe, divided and without a law, Germany did not \ belong. If only Germany at any rate had remained onef^\ it would have rested on itself in the centre of the civilized / world like the sun in the centre of the universe ; it would jj have kept itself at peace, and with itself the adjacent countries ; and without any artificial measures it would have kept everything in equilibrium by the mere fact of its natural existence. It was only the deceit of foreign ~"j countries that dragged Germany into their own lawless- / ness and their own disputes ; it was they who taught I Germany the treacherous notion of the balance of power, I for they knew it to be one of the most effective means of; deluding Germany as to its own true advantage and of keeping it in that state of delusion. This aim is now sufficiently attained, and the result that was intended is now complete before our eyes. Even if we cannot do away with this result, why should we not at any rate extirpate the source of it in our own understanding, which is now almost the only thing over which we still have sovereign power ? Why should the old dream still be placed before our eyes, now that disaster has awakened us from 230 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION sleep ? Why should we not now at any rate see the truth and perceive the only means that could have saved us ? Perhaps our descendants may dp what we see ought to be. done, just as we now suffer because our fathers dreamed. Let us understand that the conception of an equilibrium to be artificially maintained might have been a consoling dream for foreign countries amid the guilt and evil that oppressed them; but that this conception, being an entirely foreign product, ought never to have taken root in the mind of a German, and that the Germans ought never to have been so situated that it could take root among them. Let us understand that now at any rate we must perceive the utter worthlessness of such a conception, and must see that the salvation of all is to be found, not in it, but solely \ in the unity of the Germans among themselves. 203. Just as foreign to the German is the freedom of the .seas, which is so frequently preached in our days, whether what is intended be real freedom or merely the power to exclude everyone else from it. Throughout the course of centuries, while all other nations were in rivalry, the German showed little desire to participate in this freedom to any great extent, and he will never do so. Moreover, he is Qot in need of it. The abundant supplies of his own land, together with his own diligence, afford him all that is needed in the life of a civilized man ; nor does he lack skill in the art of making his resources serve that purpose. As for acquiring the only true advantage that w r orld-trade brings in its train, viz., the increase in scientific knowledge of the earth and its inhabitants, his own scientific spirit will not let him lack a means of exchange. O, if only his kindly fortune had preserved the German from indirect participation in the booty of other worlds, as it preserved him from direct participa tion ! If only we had not been led by our credulity, SAME SUBJECT FURTHER CONSIDERED 233 and by the craving for a life as fine and as distingmeone as that of other peoples, to make necessaries of the waiof produced in foreign parts which we could do without ; if only we had made conditions tolerable for our free fellow-citizen in regard to the wares we can less easily do without, instead of wishing to draw a profit from the sweat and blood of a poor slave across the seas ! Then, at any rate, we should not ourselves have furnished the pretext for our present fate ; war would not have been waged against us as purchasers, nor would we have been ruined because we are a market-place. Almost ten years ago, before anyone could foresee what has since happened, Germans were advised l to make themselves inde pendent of world-trade, and to turn themselves into a closed commercial State. J This proposal ran counter to our habits, and especially to our idolatrous veneration of coined metals ; it was passionately attacked and thrust aside. Since then we have been learning, in dishonour and under the compulsion of a foreign power, to do without those things, and far more than those things, which we then protested we could not do with out, though we might have done so then in freedom and with the greatest honour to ourselves. O, that we might seize this opportunity, since enjoyment at least is not corrupting us, to correct our ideas once for all ! O, that we might at last see that all those swindling theories about world-trade and manufacturing for the world-market, though they suit the foreigner and form part of the weapons with which he has always made war on us, have no application to the Germans ; and that, next to the unity of the Germans among themselves, their internal autonomy and commercial independence 1 [In 1800 by Fichtc himself, in Der geschlossene Handelsstaat (The Closed Commercial State).] 230 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION r- the second means for their_sahation, andjthrough a nem for the salvation of Europe ! 204. Now, at last, let us be bold enough to look at the deceptive vision of a universal jnonarchy, which people"ar^egmning~toTroI3"up for public veneration in place of that equilibrium which for some time has been growing more and more preposterous, and let us perceive how hateful and contrary to reason that vision is. Spiri tual nature was able to present the essence of humanity in extremely diverse gradations in individuals and in individuality as a whole, in peoples. Only when each people, left to itself, develops and forms itself in accord ance with its own peculiar quality, and only when in every people each individual develops himself in accord ance with that common quality, as well as in accordance with his own peculiar quality then, and then only, does the manifestation of divinity appear in its true mirror as it ought to be ; and only a man who either entirely lacks the notion of the rule of law and divine order, or else is an obdurate enemy thereto, could take upon himself to want to interfere with that law, which is the highest law in the spiritual world. Only in the invisible qualities of nations, which are hidden from their own eyes qualities as the means whereby these nations remain in touch with the source of original life only therein is to be found the guarantee of their present and future worth, virtue, and merit. If these qualities are dulled by admixture and worn away by friction, the L flatness ~l:hat results will bring about a separation from spiritual nature, and this in its turn will cause all men to be fused together to their uniform and conjoint destruction. As for the writers who console us for alf our ills with the prospect that we, too, shall be subjects of the new universal monarchy that is beginning SAME SUBJECT FURTHER CONSIDERED 233 are we to believe them when they say that someone or other has decided upon such a grinding together of all the germs of what is human in humanity, in order to press the unresisting dough into some new form, and that so monstrous an act of brutality or enmity against the human race is possible in this age of ours ? Even if, in the first place, we were willing to make up our minds to believe such an utterly incredible thing, the further question arises : By what instrument is such a plan to be carried out ? What sort of people is it to be which, in the present state of European culture, shall conquer the world for some new universal monarch ? For many centuries now the peoples of Europe have ceased to be savages or to rejoice in destructive activity for its own sake. All men seek behind war a final peace, behind exertion rest, behind confusion order ; and all men want to see their career crowned with the peace of a quiet and domestic life. For a time they may be made enthu siastic for war even by the mere prospect of advantage to the nation ; but when the call comes again and again in the same fashion, the delusion vanishes and with it the feverish strength it produced. The longing for peace and order returns, and the question arises : For what purpose am I doing and bearing all this ? All these feelings a world-conqueror in our time would first have to stamp out ; and, as the present age by its nature does not produce a race of savages, he would have to create one with deliberate art. But more would remain to be done. A man who has been accustomed from youth upwards to cultivated and settled countries, to prosperity and order, finds pleasure in these things wherever he sees them, if he is but permitted to be at peace for a little while ; for they represent to him the background of his own longing, which after all can never 234 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION be quite rooted out ; and it is a source of pain to himself when he is obliged to destroy them. To offset this kindly feeling, so deeply implanted in man as a social being, and this grief and sorrow at the evils which the soldier brings upon the countries he conquers, a counterpoise must be found. There is no other than the lust for booty. If it becomes the soldier s dominating motive to acquire a fortune for himself, and if he becomes accus tomed, when devastating flourishing countries, to think of nothing but what he may gain for himself from the general wretchedness, then it is to be expected that the feelings of sympathy and pity will become silent in him. In addition to that barbarous brutality, a world-con queror of our time would have to train his people to coldblooded and deliberate lust for booty ; he would not have to punish extortions, but rather to encourage them. Moreover, the disgrace that naturally adheres to such a thing would first of all have to be cleared away, and robbery would have to be looked upon as the honour able sign of a superior mind ; it would have to be reckoned among great deeds and pave the way to all dignities and honours. Where is there in modern Europe a nation so lacking in honour that it could be trained up in this way ? Even supposing that a world-conqueror succeeded in reshaping a nation in this fashion ; the very means he takes to do it will frustrate the attainment of his object. Such a people will thenceforward regard the human beings, the countries, and the works of art that they have acquired by conquest, as nothing more than a means of making money with all speed, so that they may move on and make more money. They will extort rapidly, and when they have sucked the juice out of a thing they will throw it away, regardless of what may happen to it ; they will cut down the tree whose fruits they want to reach. For SAME SUBJECT FURTHER CONSIDERED 235 a man who works with such tools as these all the arts of seduction, persuasion, and deception will be in vain. Only from a distance can such men deceive anyone ; as soon as they are seen at close quarters, their brutal roughness and their shameless and insolent lust for booty will be obvious even to the feeblest mind ; and the detestation of the whole human race will cry aloud upon them. With such tools as these one can indeed plunder and lay waste the earth, and grind it down to stupor and chaos, but one can never establish it as a universal monarchy. 205. The ideas w r e have mentioned, and all ideas of this kind, are products of a form of thinking which merely plays a game with itself and sometimes, too, gets caught in its own cobwebs a form of thinking which is unworthy of German thoroughness and earnestness. At best, some of these ideas, as, for example, that of a political equilibrium, are serviceable guiding-lines to enable one to find one s way about in the extensive and confused multiplicity of phenomena and to set it in order ; but to believe that these things exist in nature, or to strive to realize them, is the same as to expect to find the poles, the meridians, and the tropics, by which our survey of the earth is guided, actually marked and indicated on the surface of the globe. May it become the custom in our nation, not merely to think idly and as it were experi mentally, just to see what will come of it, but to think in such a way that what we think shall be true and have a real effect in life ! Then it will be superfluous to warn people against such phantoms of a political wisdom whose origin is foreign and which only deludes the Germans. This thoroughness, earnestness, and weightiness in our way of thinking, once we have made it our own, will show itself in our life as well. We are defeated ; whether 236 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION we are now to be despised as well, and rightly despised, whether in addition to all other losses we are to lose our honour also that will still depend on ourselves. The fight with weapons has ended ; there arises now, if we so will it, the new fight of principles, of morals, of character. 206. Let us give our guests a picture of faithful devo tion to friends and fatherland, of incorruptible uprightness and love of duty, of all civic and domestic virtues, to take home with them as a friendly gift from their hosts ; for they will return home at last some time or other. Let us be careful not to invite them to despise us ; there would, however, be no surer way for us to do this than if we either feared them beyond measure or gave up our own way of life and strove to resemble them in theirs. Be it far from us as individuals to be so unmannerly as to provoke or irritate individuals ; but, as to the rest, our safest measure will be to go our own way in all things, as if we were alone with ourselves, and not to establish any relation that is not laid upon us by absolute neces sity ; and the surest means to this will be for each one to content himself with what the old national conditions are able to afford him, to take up his share of the common burden according to his powers, but to look upon any favour from foreigners as a disgrace and a dishonour. Unfortunately, it has become an almost general European custom, and therefore a German custom too, for people to prefer to descend to the level of others, rather than to appear what is called singular or noticeable, when the choice is open to them ; indeed, the whole system of what are esteemed good manners may perhaps be regarded as based upon that one principle. Let us Germans at the present juncture offend rather against this code of manners than against something higher. Let us remain SAME SUBJECT FURTHER CONSIDERED 237 as we are, even though that may be an offence of this kind ; nay, let us become, if we can, even stronger and more determined, as we ought to be. It is the custom to tell us that we are sorely lacking in quickness and ease and grace, and that we grow too serious, too heavy, and too ponderous over everything. Let us not be in the least ashamed of this, but rather strive to deserve the accusa tion more and more fully and to an ever greater extent. Let us confirm ourselves in this resolve by the conviction, which is easily to be attained, that in spite of all the trouble we take, we shall never do right in the eyes of our accusers, unless we cease entirely to be ourselves, which is the same thing as ceasing to exist at all. There are certain peoples who, while preserving their own special characteristics and wishing to have them respected by others, yet recognize the special characteristics of other peoples, and permit and encourage their retention. To such peoples the Germans belong without a doubt ; and this trait is so deeply marked in their whole life in the world, both past and present, that very often, in order to be just both to contemporary foreign countries and to antiquity, they have been unjust to themselves. Then there are._other peoples, whose ego is so closely wrapped up in itself that it never allows them the freedom to detach themselves for the purpose of taking a cool and calm view of what is foreign to them, and who are there fore compelled to believe that there is only one possible way of existence for a civilized human being, and that is always the way which some chance or other has indicated to them alone at the time ; the rest of mankind all over the world have no other destiny, in their opinion, than to become just what they are, and ought to be extremely grateful to them if they take upon themselves the trouble of moulding them in this way. Between peoples of the , 238 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION former type there takes place an interaction of culture and education which is most beneficial to the develop ment of man as such, and an interpenetration which none the less allows each one, with the goodwill of the other, to remain its own self. Peoples of the latter type are unable to form anything, for they are unable to apprehend anything in its actual state of existence ; they only want to destroy everything that exists and to create every where, except in themselves, a void in which they can reproduce their own image and never anything else. Even their apparent acceptance of foreign ways when they begin is only gracious condescension on the part of the tutor to the still feeble but promising pupil. Even the figures of the ancient world that has come to an end do not please them, until they have clad them in their own garments ; and they would call them from their graves, if they had the power, to train them after their own fashion. Far from me be the presumption of accusing any existing nation as a whole and without exception of such narrow-mindedness. Let us rather assume that here, too, those who express no opinion are the better sort. But if those who have appeared among us and expressed their opinions are to be judged by the opinions they have expressed, it seems to follow that they are to be placed in the class we have described. As such a statement appears to require proof, I adduce the following, passing over in silence the other manifestations of this spirit which are before the eyes of Europe. We have been at war with each other ; as for us, we are defeated, and they are the victors ; that is true, and is admitted ; with that our opponents might doubtless be contented. But if anyone among us went on to maintain that never theless we had had the just cause and deserved the victory, and that it was to be deplored that victory had not fallen SAME SUBJECT FURTHER CONSIDERED 239 to us ; would this be so very wrong, and could those opponents, who, of course, for their own part may likewise think what they will, take it amiss that we should be of this opinion ? But no, we must not dare to think that. We must at the same time recognize how wrong it is ever to have a will other than theirs, and to resist them ; we must bless our defeats as the best thing that could happen to us, and bless them as our greatest benefactors. It cannot be otherwise, and they hope this much of our good sense. But why should I go on expounding what was expounded with great exactness almost two thousand years ago, for example, in the Histories of Tacitus ? That opinion of the Romans as to the relationship of the conquered barbarians towards them, an opinion which in their case was founded on a view of things that had some excuse, the opinion that it was criminal rebellion and insurrection against divine and human laws to offer resistance to them, and that their arms could bring nothing but blessing to the nations, and their chains nothing but honour it is this opinion that has been formed about us in these days ; with great good-nature they expect us to hold it about ourselves, and they assume in advance that we do hold it. I do not take these utterances as evidence of arrogance and scorn ; I can understand how such opinions may be held in earnest by people who are very conceited and narrow-minded, and how they can honestly impute the same belief to their opponents, just as I believe that the Romans really thought so ; but I only raise a doubt as to whether those among us, whose conversion to that way of thinking is for ever impossible, can reckon upon an agreement of any kind whatever. 207. We shall bring the deep contempt of foreigners upon ourselves if in their hearing we accuse each other, 240 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION German races, classes, and persons, of being responsible for the fate that has befallen every one of us, and bitterly and passionately reproach each other. In the first place, all accusations of this kind are for the most part unfair, unjust, and unfounded. The causes that have brought about Germany s latest doom we have already indicated ; these causes have for centuries been native to all German races without exception in the same way ; the latest events are not the consequences of any particular error of any one race or its government ; they have been in preparation long enough, and might just as well have happened to us long ago, if it had depended solely on the causes that lie within our own selves. In this matter the guilt or innocence of all is, one may say, equally great, and a reckoning is no longer possible. When the final result came about in haste, it was found that the separate German States did not even know themselves, their powers, and their true situation ; how, then, could any one of them have the presumption to look beyond its own borders and pronounce upon the guilt of others a final judgment based on thorough knowledge ? 208. It may be that in every race of the German fatherland the blame falls with more reason on one special class, not because it did not have more insight or greater ability than all the others, for in that respect all were equally to blame, but because it pretended that it had more insight and greater ability, and kept everyone else away from the work of administration in the various States. But, even if a reproach of this kind were well founded, who is to utter it, and why is it necessary to utter and discuss it, just at this moment, more loudly and more bitterly then ever ? We see that men of letters are doing this. If they spoke just as they do now in the days when all power and all authority were in the hands of SAME SUBJECT FURTHER CONSIDERED 241 that class, with the tacit approval of the decisive majority of the rest of mankind, who can object if they bring to remembrance what they then said, now that it has been only too well confirmed by experience ? We hear also that they bring certain persons by name before the tribunal of the people, persons who formerly stood at the head of affairs, that they set forth their incapacity, their indolence, and their evil will, and clearly show how from such causes such effects were bound to follow. If, when power was still in the hands of the accused persons, and when the evils that were the inevitable result of their administration could have been warded off, these writers saw what they now see and expressed it just as loudly ; if they then accused with the same vigour those whom they now find guilty, and if they left no means untried to rescue the fatherland out of their hands, and if no one listened to them ; then, they do well to recall to mind the warning that was scornfully rejected. But, if they have derived their present wisdom only from the course of events, from which all people since then have derived with them exactly the same wisdom, why do they now say what everyone else now knows just as well ? Or further, if in those days from motives of gain they flattered, or from motives of fear they remained silent before, that class and those persons on whom, now that they have lost powder, they pour the full stream of denunciation ; then, let them not forget henceforth, when they are stating the causes of our present miseries, to put with the nobility and the incompetent ministers and generals the writers on politics also, who know only after the event what ought to have been done, just like the common people, and who flatter the holders of power, but with malicious joy deride the fallen ! Or do they blame the errors of the past, which for all 16 242 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION their blame is indestructible, only in order that they may not be repeated in the future ; and is it solely their zeal to bring about a thorough improvement in human affairs which makes them so bold in disregarding all considera tions of prudence and decency ? Gladly would we credit them with such goodwill, if only they were entitled by thorough insight and thorough understanding to have goodwill in this matter. It is not so much the particular persons who happen to have been in the highest places, but the connection and complication of the whole, the whole spirit of the age, the errors, the ignorance, shallow- ness, timidity, and the uncertain tread inseparable from these things, it is the whole way of life of the age that has brought these miseries upon us ; and so it is far less the persons who have acted than the places ; it is everyone s fault ; and everyone, even the violent fault-finders themselves, may assume with great probability that if they had been in the same place they would have been forced by their surroundings to much the same end. Let us not dream so much of deliberate wickedness and treachery ! Stupidity and indolence are in nearly every case sufficient to explain the things that have happened ; and this is a charge of which no one should entirely clear himself without searching self-examination. Especially in a state of affairs where there is in the whole mass a very great fneasure of indolence, the individual who is to force his way through must possess the power of action in a very high degree. So, even if the mistakes of individuals are ever so sharply singled out, that does not in any way lay bare the cause of the evil ; nor is this cause removed by avoiding these mistakes in future. So long as men remain liable to error, they cannot do otherwise than commit errors ; and even if they avoid those of their predecessors, in the infinite space of liability to error they will all too SAME SUBJECT FURTHER CONSIDERED 243 easily make new errors of their own. Only a complete regeneration, only the beginning of an entirely new spirit can help us. If they co-operate for the development of this new spirit, we shall be ready and willing to give them credit, not only for goodwill, but also for right and saving understanding. 209. These mutual reproaches, besides being unjust and useless, are extremely unwise, and must degrade us deeply in the eyes of foreigners ; we not only make it easy for them to find out all about us, but positively force the knowledge on them in every way. If we never grow weary of telling them how confused and stale all things were with us, and how miserably we were governed, must they not believe that no matter how they behave towards us they are none the less much too good for us, and can never become too bad ? Must they not believe that, because of our great clumsiness and helplessness, we are bound to accept with the humblest thanks any and every thing out of the rich store of their art of govern ment, administration, and legislation that they have already presented to us, or have in contemplation for us in the future ? Is there any need for us to confirm their already not unfavourable opinion of themselves and the low opinion they have of us ? Do not certain utterances, which would otherwise have to be taken as evidence of bitter scorn for example, that they have been the first to bring a fatherland to German countries, which previ ously had none, or that they have abolished that slavish dependence of persons, as such, on other persons, which used to be established by law among us do not such utterances, when we remember what we ourselves have said, show themselves as a repetition of our own statements and an echo of our own flattering speeches ? It is a disgrace, which we Germans share with no other of the 244 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION European peoples whose fate in other respects has been similar to ours, that, as soon as ever foreign arms ruled over us, we behaved as if we had long been awaiting this moment, and sought to do ourselves a good turn quickly, before it was too late, by pouring forth a stream of denun ciation on our governments and our rulers, whom we had formerly flattered in a way that offended against good taste, and by railing against everything represented by the word " fatherland." 210. How shall those of us who are not guilty ward off the disgrace from our heads and let the guilty ones stand by themselves ? There is a means. No more scurrilous denunciations will be printed the moment it is certain that no more will be bought, and as soon as their authors and publishers can no longer reckon on readers tempted to buy them for lack of something better to do, by idle curiosity and love of gossip, or by the malicious joy of seeing those men humiliated who at one time instilled into them the painful feeling of respect. Let everyone who feels the disgrace hand back with fitting contempt a libel that is offered him to read ; let him do this, although he believes he is the only one who acts in this way, until it becomes the custom among us for every man of honour to do the same ; and then, without any enforcement of restrictions on books, we shall soon be free of this scanda lous portion of our literature. 211. Finally, we debase ourselves most of all before foreigners when we lay ourselves out to flatter them. In former days certain persons among us made themselves contemptible, ludicrous, and nauseating beyond measure by burning thick incense before our own rulers on every occasion, and by caring for neither sense nor decency, neither taste nor good manners, when they thought there was a chance of delivering a flattering address. SAME SUBJECT FURTHER CONSIDERED 245 This practice has ceased at this time, and these paeans of praise have been transformed in some cases into words of abuse. However, in order not to get out of practice, as it were, we gave our clouds of incense another direction and turned them towards the place where power now resides. Even the old way and not only the flattery itself, but also the fact that it was not declined could not but give pain to every serious-minded German ; still, we kept it to ourselves. Are we now going to make foreigners also the witnesses of this base craving of ours, and of the great clumsiness with which we give vent to it ; and are we thus going to add to the contemptible exhibi tion of our baseness the ludicrous demonstration of our lack of adroitness? For, when we set about these things, we are lacking in all the refinement that the foreigner possesses ; so as to avoid not being heard, we lay it on thick and exaggerate everything ; we begin straight away with deifications and place our heroes among the stars. Another thing is that we give the impression of being driven to these paeans of praise chiefly by fear and terror ; but there is nothing more ridiculous than a frightened man who praises the beauty and graciousness of a creature which in fact he takes to be a monster, and which he merely seeks to bribe by his flattery not to swallow him up. 212. Or are these hymns of praise perhaps not flattery, but the genuine expression of reverence and admiration which they are compelled to pay to the great genius who, according to them, now directs the affairs of mankind ? How little they know, in this case too, the character of true greatness ! In all ages and among all peoples true greatness has remained the same in this respect, that it was not vain ; just as, on the other hand, whatever displayed vanity has always been beyond a doubt base 246 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION and petty. True greatness, resting on itself, finds no pleasure in monuments erected by contemporaries, or in being called " The Great," or in the shrieking applause and praises of the mob ; rather, it rejects these things with fitting contempt, and awaits first the verdict on itself from its own indwelling judge, and then the public verdict from the judgment of posterity. True greatness has always had this further characteristic : it is filled with awe and reverence in the face of dark and mysterious fate, it is mindful of the ever-rolling wheel of destiny, and never allows itself to be counted great or happy before its end. Hence, those who hymn its praises contradict themselves, and by using words they make their words a lie. If they believed that the object of their pretended veneration was really great, they would humbly admit that he was exalted above their acclamations and lauda tion, and they would honour him by reverent silence. By making it their business to praise him they show that in fact they take him to be petty and base, and so vain that their hymns of praise can give him pleasure, and that they hope thereby to divert some evil from them selves, or procure themselves some benefit. That cry of enthusiasm : " What a sublime genius ! What profound wisdom ! What a comprehensive plan ! " what after all does it mean when we look at it properly ? It means that the genius is so great that we, too, can fully understand it, the wisdom so profound that we, too, can see through it, the plan so comprehensive that we, too, are able to imitate it completely. Hence it means that he who is praised has about the same measure of greatness as he who praises ; and yet not quite, for the latter, of course, understands the former fully and is superior to him ; hence, he stands above him and, if he only exerted himself thoroughly, could no doubt achieve SAME SUBJECT FURTHER CONSIDERED 247 something even greater. He must have a very good opinion of himself who believes that he can pay court acceptably in this way ; and the one who is praised must have a very low opinion of himself if he finds pleasure in such tributes. 213. No! Good, earnest, steady German men and countrymen, far from our spirit be such a lack of under standing, and far be such defilement from our language, which is formed to express the truth. Let us leave it to foreigners to burst into jubilation and amazement at every new phenomenon, to make a new standard of greatness every decade, to create new gods, and to speak blasphemies in order to please human beings. Let our A standard of greatness be the old one : that alone is great which is capable of receiving the ideas which always bring nothing but salvation upon the peoples, and which is inspired by those ideas. But, as regards the living, let us leave the verdict to the judgment of posterity. FOURTEENTH ADDRESS CONCLUSION 214. IN the addresses which I conclude to-day, I have spoken aloud to you first of all, but I have had in view the whole German nation, and my intention has been to gather round me, in the room in which you are bodily present, everyone in the domain of the German language who is able to understand me. If I have succeeded in throwing into any heart which has beaten here in front of me a spark which will continue to glow there and to influence its life, it is not my intention that these hearts < should remain apart and lonely ; I want to gather to them_ from over the whole of our common soil men of similaii v sentiments and resolutions, and to link them together] f so that at this central point a: single, continumis/7nd tmceaslflg^rlame ot patriotic disposition may be^kmdled, wliidi Will spread over the whole soil of "the "fatherianS to its utmost boundaries^ These addresses have not been meant for the entertainment of indolent ears and eyes in the present age ; on the contrary, I want to know once for all, and everyone of like disposition shall know it with me, whether there is anyone besides ourselves whose way^of__ thinking is akin to ours. Every German who still believes himself to be a member of a nation, who thinks highly and nobly of that nation, hopes for it, ventures, endures, and suffers for it, shall at last have the uncertainty of his 248 CONCLUSION 249 belief removed ; he shall see clearly whether he is right or is only a fool and a dreamer ; from now on he shall either pursue his way with the glad consciousness of certainty, or else firmly and vigorously renounce a fatherland here below, and find in the heavenly one his only consolation. To them, not as individuals in our everyday limited life, but as representatives of the nation, and so through their ears to the whole nation, these addresses make this appeal : 215. Centuries have come and gone since you were last convoked as you are to-day ; in such numbers ; in a cause so great, so urgent, and of such concern to all and every one ; so entirely as a nation and as Germans. Never again will the offer come to you in this way. If you now take no heed and withdraw into yourselves, if you again let these addresses go by you as if they were meant merely to tickle your ears, or if you regard them as something strange and fabulous, then no human being will ever take you into account again. Hearken now r at last ; reflect now at last. Go not from your place this time at least without first making a firm resolution ; and let everyone who hears my voice make this resolution by himself and for himself, just as if he were alone and had to do everything alone. If very many individuals think in this way, there will soon be formed a large community which will be fused into a single close-connected force. But if, on the contrary, each one, leaving himself out, puts his hope in the rest and leaves the matter to others, then there will be no others, and all together will remain as they were before. Make it on the spot, this resolution. Do not say : " Let us rest a little longer, let us sleep and dream a little longer, till the improvement comes of itself." It will never come of itself. He who has once let yesterday go by, which would have been a more convenient time 250 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION for reflection, and yet cannot use his will to-day, will be still less able to do so to-morrow. Every delay makes us all the more indolent, and cradles us still more deeply in the habit of familiarity with our wretched condition. Then, too, the external motives to reflection can never be stronger or more urgent. He who is not aroused by the present situation has beyond a doubt lost all power of feeling. You are convoked to make a firm and final resolu tion and decision ; and in no wise to give a command, an order, an incitement to others, but an incitement to your selves. You must make a resolution of a kind which each one can carry out only by himself and in his own person. In this matter the leisurely indication of an intention does not suffice, nor the will to exert a will at some future time, nor yet the indolent resolve to submit some time or other to what is proposed, if one should meanwhile of one s self have become a better man. No, you are called upon to make a resolve that will itself be part of your life, a resolve that is itself a deed within you, that endures there and continues to hold sway without being moved or shaken, a resolve that never grows cold, until it hasj attained its object. 216. Or is, perchance, the root, from which alone such a resolution can spring and have an influence on life, completely destroyed, and has it disappeared ? Is your whole being in truth and in fact thinned and reduced to an empty shadow, without sap and blood and power of motion ; reduced to a dream in which bright visions are begotten and busily pursue each other, but where the body lies stiff and as it were dead ? This age has long been told to its face, and has heard it repeated in every shape and form, that this or something like it is the general opinion. Its spokesmen have believed that people who said this only wanted to slander them, and have regarded CONCLUSION 251 it as a challenge to themselves to slander in return, supposing that the natural order of things would thereby be restored. Yet there has not been the least trace of any alteration or improvement. But if you have under stood the indictment, if it has succeeded in making you indignant, then by your acts give the lie to those who think and speak thus of you ; show before the eyes of all the world that you are different, and then those men in the eyes of all the world will be convicted of untruth. Perchance it was precisely with the intention of being refuted by you in this way, and because they despaired of any other means of rousing you, that they spoke of you as harshly as they did. If that was the case, how much better disposed towards you they were than those who flatter you, in order that you may be kept in sloth and quietude and all-unheeding thoughtlessness ! However weak and powerless you may be, never before has clear and calm reflection been made so easy for you as at the present time. The thing that really plunged us into confusion as to our position, that caused our thought lessness, our blind acquiescence in all that happened, was our sweet self-satisfaction ; we were satisfied with our selves and our way of life. Things had gone on all right hitherto and continued to go on just the same. If anyone challenged us to reflection, we triumphantly pointed out to him, in place of any other refutation, our existence and continuance, which came about without any reflection on our part. But things went on all right solely because we had not been put to the test. Since then we have gone through it. Since that time the deceptions, the illusions, the false consolation, by which we all led each other mutually astray, have surely collapsed. The inborn prejudices which, without proceeding from any one place, spread themselves like a natural fog over everyone, and 252 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION enveloped everyone in the same twilight surely they have vanished now ! That twilight no longer binds our eyes ; moreover, it can no longer serve us as an excuse. Here we stand now, bare and empty, with all external coverings and hangings taken away, just as we are ourselves. Now there must be revealed what that self is or is not. 217. Perhaps someone may come forward from among you and ask me : " What gives you alone of all German men and writers the special task, the vocation, and the right to assemble us and press your views upon us ? Would not each one of the thousands of Germany s men of letters have just: as much right to it as you ? Not one of them does it, but you alone thrust yourself forward." I answer that, of course, everyone would have the same right as I have, that I am doing it solely because not one of them has done it before me, and that I would be silent if another had already done it. This was the first step to the goal of a thorough reformation ; someone or other had to take it. I was the first one to see it vividly ; therefore it fell to me to take the first step. After this some other step will be the second ; all have now the same right to take this step ; but once again it will in fact be one man, and one man only, who does take it. There must always be one who is first ; then let him be first who can ! 218. Without troubling yourselves about this objection, let your gaze rest for a little while upon the view to which we have already conducted you, viz., in what an enviable condition Germany would be, and the world as well, if the former had known how to make use of the good for tune due to its position and to recognize its advantages. Let your eye dwell upon what both are now, and make yourselves feel to the quick the pain and indignation which must seize every noble-minded man when he CONCLUSION 253 beholds it. Turn back then to your own selves and see that it is you whom time will free from the errors of the preceding ages and from whose eyes it will remove the mist, if you permit it ; that it is granted to you, as to no generation before you, to undo what has been done and to delete the discreditable intervening period from the pages of German history. Review in your own minds the various conditions between which you now have to make a choice. If you continue in your dullness and helplessness, all the evils of serfdom are awaiting you ; deprivations, humilia tions, the scorn and arrogance of the conqueror ; you will be driven and harried in every corner, because you are in the wrong and in the way everywhere ; until, by the sacrifice of your nationality and your language, you have purchased for yourselves some subordinate and petty place, and until in this way you gradually die out as a people. If, on the other hand, you bestir yourselves and play the man, you will continue in a tolerable and hon ourable existence, and you will see growing up among and around you a generation that will be the promise for you and for the Germans of most illustrious renown. You will see in spirit the German name rising by means of this generation to be the most glorious among all peoples ; you will see this nation the regenerator and re-creator of the world. 219. It depends on you whether you want to be the end, and to be the last of a generation unworthy of respect and certain to be despised by posterity even beyond its due a generation of whose history (if, indeed, there can be any history in the barbarism that will then begin) your descendants will read the end with gladness, saying that its fate was just ; or whether you want to be the beginning and the point of development for a new age glorious 254 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION beyond all your conceptions, and the generation from whom posterity will reckon the year of their salvation. Reflect that you are the last in whose power this great alteration lies. You have, even in your day, heard the Germans spoken of as one ; you have seen or have heard of a visible sign of their unity, an empire and an imperial federa tion ; among you voices have made themselves heard from time to time which were inspired by the higher love of fatherland. Those who come after you will accustom themselves to other ideas, will adopt alien forms and another way of conducting life and affairs ; and how long will it be then before there is no one living who has seen or heard of Germans ? 220. What is demanded of you is not much. You are only bidden to undertake to pull yourselves together for a short time, and to think over that which lies immediately and openly before your eyes. On that alone you are to form a definite opinion, to remain true to it, and utter and express it in your own immediate surroundings. It is an assumption, it is our sure conviction, that the result of this thinking will prove to be the same with all of you, and that, if only you really think and do not go on in the old heedlessness, you will think alike; that, if only you put on the spirit and do not remain on the level of mere vegetable existence, unity and concord of spirit will come of itself. But, once that has come about, everything else that we need will be added to us without our seeking. Now, this effort of thought is in fact demanded of each one of you, who is still capable of thinking for himself about a thing that lies plainly before his eyes. You have time for it ; there is no question of the present moment bewildering you or taking you by surprise ; the documents recording the negotiations conducted with you still lie CONCLUSION 255 before your eyes. Do not lay them aside until you have made up your minds. Do not, O, do not allow yourselves to relax by trusting in others or in anything whatever that lies outside yourselves, nor yet by the foolish wisdom of the time, which holds that the ages make themselves, without any human aid, by means of some unknown force. These addresses have not grown weary of impressing upon you that nothing whatever can help you except yourselves ; and they find it necessary to repeat it up to the last moment. It may be that rain and dew and fruitful or unfruitful seasons are made by a force unknown to us and not in our power ; but all human relationships, the whole special province of man, are made only by men themselves and by absolutely no power outside them. Only when they are all equally blind and ignorant do they fall victims to this hidden power ; but it rests with them not to be blind and ignorant. It is true that the degree of evil, be it greater or less, which will befall us may depend partly on that unknown power ; but it will depend very specially on the understanding and good will of those to whom we are subjected. But whether it will ever go well with us again depends entirely on ourselves ; and it is certain that no well-being whatever will come to us again unless we procure it for ourselves, and especially unless each one of us, in his own way, acts and works as if he were alone, and as if upon him alone depended the salvation of generations to come. 221. This is what you have to do. These addresses solemnly appeal to you to do it without delay. To you, young men, they solemnly appeal. I, who have long ceasecTTo" belong to your ranks, am of the opinion, which I have expressed in these addresses, that you are even more capable than others of any thought that lies outside the common round, and more susceptible 256 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION to all that is good and vigorous, because your age lies nearer to the years of childlike innocence and of nature. Quite otherwise is this trait in you regarded by the majority of the older world. They accuse you of arrogance, of hasty and presumptuous judgment exceeding your powers, of always thinking yourselves in the right, of a mania for innovation. Yet they only smile good-humouredly at these failings of yours. All this, they think, is founded solely on your lack of knowledge of the world that is to say, of the general state of human corruption ; for they have no eyes for anything else in the world. You have courage now, they think, only because you hope to find helpers of like mind, and do not know the grim and stiff-necked resistance which will be offered to your plans for the better. Just wait a little while, they say ; when once the youthful fire of your imagination has died away, when you have come to learn the general state of selfishness, sloth- fulness, and dislike for work, when you yourselves have once properly tasted the sweetness of going on in an accus tomed groove, then the desire and the will to be better and cleverer than all the rest will depart from you. This good hope which they have of you is not based on thin air ; they have found it confirmed in their own person. They must confess that in the days of their foolish youth they dreamed of improving the world, just as you do now ; nevertheless, as they grew more mature they became as tame and peaceful as you see them at present. I believe them ; I have myself, even in my own not very long experience, seen young men, who at first aroused other hopes, none the less at a later stage fully come up to the well-meaning expectations of this age of maturity. Do this no longer, young men ; for if you do, how can a better generation ever begin ? The glow of youth will, it is true, fall from you, and the flame of your imagina- CONCLUSION 257 live power will cease to find nourishment in itself ; but seize this flame and concentrate it by clear thinking, make the art of such thinking your very own and you will have added unto you the finest equipment of man, which is character. In and by that clear thinking main tain the source of the eternal bloom of youth ; however much your body may grow old or your knees tremble, your mind will re-create itself in ever-renewed freshness, and your character will stand fast and upright. Embrace at once the opportunity that here presents itself to you ; think clearly over the subject that is proffered to you for reflection ; the clearness that has dawned for you on this one point will gradually spread itself over all the, others too. 222. These addresses appeal solemnly to you, old men. You have just heard what people think of you ; they say it to your face, and I, the speaker, frankly add thereto for myself that, with regard to the great majority among you, apart from the exceptions which are undoubtedly not rare and which are all the more worthy of honour, what people say is entirely justified. Go through the history of the last two or three decades ; everyone except you yourselves is agreed (and even among yourselves each one is agreed except as regards the special branch with which he himself is concerned) that, always apart from the exceptions and with reference only to the majority, in every branch, in science as well as in the affairs of life, more inefficiency and selfishness was found among the older men than anywhere else. The whole contemporary world looked on and saw how every man that wished for a better and more perfect state of things had to fight, not only against his own lack of clearness and his other environment his greatest fight was against you ; the world saw that you had firmly resolved that nothing must 17 258 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION come to the front which you had not known about or done, that you regarded every stirring of thought as an insult to your intelligence, and that you left no power unused by which you might become the victors in this fight against the better, as indeed you were generally the victors. Thus, you were the force which held up all the improvements which kindly nature offered to us from her ever-youthful lap, until you were gathered to the dust (dust that you were already !), and the younger generation in the war with you had become like you and took over your old way of administration. You only need to act now as you have hitherto acted in regard to all proposals for improvement ; you only need to put higher than the common weal your vanity in regarding it as a point of honour that there shall be nothing under heaven that you have not already discovered ; then, by this last fight you will be spared any further fighting ; no improvement will take place, but deterioration will follow on deterioration, so that you will still have many an occasion to rejoice. I do not want you to think that I despise old age as such, or run it down. If only the source of original life and of its continued movement has by means of freedom been taken up into life, clearness grows, and power with it, so long as life lasts. Such a life becomes better as it is lived, the clay of its earthly origin falling away more and more ; it ennobles itself and reaches upwards towards eternal life and blossoms out to meet it. In such a life experience does not reconcile itself to evil, but only makes clearer the means, and brings more skill in the art, of fighting evil triumphantly. For the deterioration due to increasing age, the times we live in are solely to blame ; such deterioration must be the result wherever society is very corrupt. It is not nature that corrupts us ; nature CONCLUSION 259 creates us in innocence ; society corrupts us. He who once surrenders himself to its influence must in the nature of things become worse and worse, the longer he is exposed to this influence. It would be worth while to examine from this point of view the history of other ages that have been very corrupt, and to see, for example, whether under the government of the Roman emperors what was bad did not become worse and worse with increasing age. So, among you old men and men of experience it is first to those who form the exception that these addresses solemnly appeal. Support, strengthen, and give counsel in this matter to the younger generation who reverently direct their gaze towards you. But to you others who form the majority the solemn appeal of these addresses is this : you are not asked to help, but just for this once do not interfere ; do not put yourselves in the way, as you have always done hitherto, with your wisdom and your thousand grave objections. This matter, like every other matter of reason in the world, has not a thousand aspects, but only one ; and that is one of the thousand things you do not know. If your wisdom could bring salvation, it would have saved us before this, for it is you who have advised us hitherto. That is now, like every thing else, in vain, and shall not be brought up against you any more. But learn at long last to know yourselves, and be silent. 223. These addresses appeal solemnly to you, men of business. With few exceptions you have hitherto been at heart hostile to abstract thought, and to every science that wished to be something for its own sake, although you put on an air of superiority and treated all that sort of thing with contempt. You kept the men who pursued such subjects, and the proposals they made, as far from 2 6o ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION you as you possibly could ; to be called lunatics, or advised to betake themselves to a madhouse, was the thanks they could most generally reckon on getting from you. They for their part did not dare to express them selves about you with the same frankness, because they were dependent on you ; but, in their inmost hearts, their true opinion of you was this, that with few exceptions you are shallow babblers and puffed-up braggarts, half- educated men who merely ran through a course at school, blind men who have to feel their way and creep along in the old groove, and who neither want nor are capable of anything else. By your actions convict them of lying. For this purpose seize the opportunity now offered to you ; lay aside your contempt of profound thought and science ; let yourselves be told what you do not know, then listen and learn ; otherwise your accusers will carry their point. 224. These addresses appeal solemnly to you, thinkers, scholars, and men of letters, to such of you as are still worthy of the name. The reproach that men of affairs brought against you was in a certain sense not unjust. Often you went on in the sphere of pure thought too unconcernedly, without troubling yourselves about the actual world, or trying to find out how the two might be brought into connection ; you described your own world, and left the actual one too much alone, despising and scorning it. It is true that all regulation and formation of actual life must proceed from a higher regulating idea, and that going along in the accustomed way is not enough ; that is an eternal truth, and in God s name crushes with unconcealed contempt everyone who dares to occupy him self with affairs without knowing this. Nevertheless, between the idea and the act of introducing it into every separate form of life there lies a great gulf. To fill up CONCLUSION 261 this gulf is not only the work of the man of affairs, who indeed must previously have learnt enough to be able to understand you, but the work also of you, who in the world of thought must not forget life. At this point both of you meet. Instead of looking askance at each other across the gulf and depreciating each other, rather let each party be zealous to fill up the gulf from his side and so pave the way to union. Finally, comprehend that both of you are as necessary to each other as head and arm are necessary to each other. These addresses appeal solemnly in other respects as well to you, thinkers, scholars, and men of letters, to such of you as are still worthy of the name. Your complaints about the general shallowness, thoughtlessness, and vagueness, about conceitedness and the inexhaustible flow of idle chatter, about the contempt for seriousness and thorough ness that prevail in all classes, may be true, as indeed they are. But then, what class is it which has brought up all these classes, which has turned everything scientific into a game for them, and has trained them from their earliest youth to that conceitedness and idle chatter ? Who is it that continues to instruct the generations that have left school ? The most obvious cause of the stupidity of the age is that it has read itself stupid with the works which you have written. Why do you, nevertheless, continue to make it your business to keep such indolent people entertained, regardless of the fact that they have learnt nothing and want to learn nothing ? Why do you call them " the public," flatter them by making them your judges, set them on against your rivals, and seek by every means to win over this blind and confused mob to your side ? Finally, why do you give them, even in your reviewing establishments and journals, not only the material, but also the model for their hasty judgments, by 262 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION delivering judgment yourselves as the fancy seizes you, without any connecting principle and usually without taste, in a way that the meanest of your readers could equal ? If you do not all think like this, if even yet there are better-disposed writers among you, why do they not unite to put an end to the evil ? Especially with refer ence to our men of business ; they ran through a course at school under you ; you say it yourselves. Why did you not make use of the time they spent with you to instil into them at any rate some silent respect for the sciences, and especially to shatter betimes the conceit of high-born youths and to show them that, when it comes to thinking, neither rank nor birth are of any avail ? If perchance even at that time you flattered them and gave them prominence beyond their merits, you must now bear the burden of what you yourselves have created. They are willing to pardon you, these addresses, on the assumption that you had not grasped the importance of your business ; they solemnly appeal to you to make yourselves acquainted from this very hour with its impor tance, and no longer to carry it on as if it were merely a trade. Learn to respect yourselves, show by your actions that you do so, and the world will respect you. The first proof of it you will give by the influence you yourselves exert on the resolution that is here proposed, and by the way in which you conduct yourselves in connection therewith. 225. These addresses appeal solemnly to you, princes of Germany. Those who in their dealings with you act as if no one ought to say anything whatever to you, or could have occasion to say anything, are contemptible flatterers ; they wickedly slander you and no one else ; put them far from you. The truth is that you are born just as ignorant as all the rest of us, and that you must CONCLUSION 263 listen and learn just as we must, if you are to emerge from this state of natural ignorance. Your share in bringing about the fate that has befallen you together with your peoples has been stated here in the mildest and, we believe, the only just and equitable way ; and unless you are willing to listen to flattery only, but never to the truth, you can have no complaint to make against these addresses. Let all this be forgotten, in the same way that all the rest of us wish that our share of the blame may be forgotten. For you too, as for all of us, a new life now begins. O, that this voice of mine might penetrate to you through the whole environment which is wont to make you inaccessible ! With proud self-reliance it may say to you : you rule over peoples more loyal, more docile, more worthy of happiness than any princes have ever ruled over in any age or any nation. They have a sense of freedom and a capacity for it ; but they followed you into a bloody war against what seemed to them freedom, because you willed it. Some among you willed otherwise later, and they followed you into what must have seemed to them a war of extirpation against one of the last remnants of German independence and autonomy, again because you willed it so. Since then they have been bearing and enduring the oppressive burden of our common woes ; and they cease not to be loyal to you, to cleave to you with intense devotion, and to love you as their divinely appointed guardians. If you could only observe them without their knowing it ; if you could only escape from that environment, which does not always present the loveliest aspect of humanity to you, and descend into the houses of the citizen and the cottages of the peasant, there to follow and reflect upon the quiet and secluded life of these classes of society, with whom the qualities of loyalty and uprightness, so rare now among the upper 264 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION classes, seem to have taken refuge ; O, then, beyond a doubt you would be filled with a resolve to think more earnestly than ever how help might be brought to them. These addresses have suggested to you a means of help which they deem certain, thoroughgoing, and decisive. Let your counsellors take counsel among themselves as to whether they too are of this opinion, or whether they know a better means ; only it must be equally decisive. But the conviction that something must happen, and must happen without delay, and that something thorough going and decisive must happen, and that the time for half-measures and temporary expedients is over, this conviction I would have these addresses bring forth in you yourselves, if they can, seeing that they still have the greatest confidence in your uprightness. 226. To all you Germans, whatever position you may occupy in society, these addresses solemnly appeal ; let every one of you, who can think, think first of all about the subject here suggested, and let each do for it what lies nearest to him individually in the position he occupies. 227. Your forefathers unite themselves with these addresses, and make a solemn appeal to you. Think that in my voice there are mingled the voices of your ancestors of the hoary past, who with their own bodies stemmed the onrush of Roman world-dominion, who with their blood won the independence of those mountains, plains, and rivers which under you have fallen a prey to the foreigner. They call to you : " Act for us ; let the memory of us which you hand on to posterity be just as honourable and without reproach as it was when it came to you, when you took pride in it and in your descent from us. Until now, the resistance we made has been regarded as great and wise and noble ; we seemed CONCLUSION 265 the consecrated and the inspired in the divine world- purpose. If our race dies out with you, our honour will be turned to shame and our wisdom to foolishness. Fof if, indeed, the German stock is to be swallowed up in Roman civilization, it were better that it had fallen before the Rome of old than before a Rome of to-day. The former we resisted and conquered ; by the latter you have been ground to dust. Seeing that this is so, you shall now not conquer them with temporal weapons ; your spirit alone shall rise up against them and stand erect. To you has fallen the greater destiny, to found the empire of the spirit and of reason, and completely to annihilate the rule of brute physical force in the world. If you do this, then you are worthy of your descent from us." 228. Then, too, there mingle with these voices the spirits of your more recent forefathers, those who fell in the holy war for the freedom of belief and of religion. " Save our honour too," they cry to you. " To us it was not entirely clear what we fought for ; besides the lawful resolve not to let ourselves be dictated to by exter nal force in matters of conscience, there was another and a higher spirit driving us, which never fully revealed itself to us. To you it is revealed, this spirit, if you have the power of vision in the spiritual world ; it beholds you with eyes clear and sublime. The varied and confused mixture of sensuous and spiritual motives that has hitherto ruled the world shall be displaced, and spirit alone, pure and freed from all sensuous motives, shall take the helm of human affairs. It was in order that this spirit might have freedom to develop and grow to independent existence it was for this that we poured forth our blood. It is for you to justify and give meaning to our sacrifice, by setting this spirit to fulfil its purpose and to rule the 266 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION world. If this does not come about as the final goal to which the whole previous development of our nation has been tending, then the battles we fought will turn out to be a vain and fleeting farce, and the freedom of conscience and of spirit that we won is a vain word, if from now onwards spirit and conscience are to be no more." 229. There comes a solemn appeal to you from your descendants not yet born. " You boast of your fore fathers," they cry to you, " and link yourselves with pride to a noble line. Take care that the chain does not break off with you ; see to it that we, too, may boast of you and use you as an unsullied link to connect ourselves with the same illustrious line. Do not force us to be ashamed of our descent from you as from base and slavish barbarians ; do not compel us to conceal our origin, or to fabricate a strange one and to take a strange name, lest we be at once and without further examina tion rejected and trodden underfoot. As the next generation that proceeds from you turns out to be, so will your reputation be in history ; honourable, if they bear honourable witness for you, but disgraceful even beyond your due, if your descendants may not speak for you, and the conqueror makes your history. Never yet has a conqueror had sufficient inclination or sufficient knowledge to judge the conquered justly. The more he depreciates them, the more just does he himself stand out. Who can know what great deeds, what excellent institutions, what noble customs of many a people in the ancient world have fallen into oblivion, because their descendants were forced under the yoke, while the conqueror wrote an account of them that suited his purpose, and there was none to contradict him ! " 230. A solemn appeal comes to you even from foreign CONCLUSION 267 countries, in so far as they still understand themselves even to the slightest extent, and still have an eye for their true advantage. Yea, in all nations there are still some souls who cannot even yet believe that the great promises of a realm of justice, reason, and truth for the human race are vain and naught but a baseless delu- i sion, and who, therefore, assume that the present age of iron is but a transition to a better state. These souls, and in them the whole of modern humanity, count upon you. A large part of modern humanity is descended from us, and the rest have received from us their religion i and all their civilization. The former solemnly appeal to us by the soil of our common fatherland, which was their cradle, too, and which they have left free for us, the latter by the culture they have received from us as the pledge of a loftier bliss both appeal to us to preserve ourselves for them too and for their sake, just as we have always been, and not to let the whole organism of the new race that has arisen be violently deprived of this member so important to it ; so that, when they come to need our counsel, our example, and our co-operation in striving towards the true goal of earthly life, they will not miss us, to their pain. 231. All ages, all wise and good men who have ever breathed upon this earth, all their thoughts and intuitions of something loftier, mingle with these voices and sur round you and lift up imploring hands to you ; even, if one may say so, providence and the divine plan in creat ing a race of men, a plan which exists only to be thought out by men and to be brought by men into the actual world the divine plan, I say, solemnly appeals to you to save its honour and its existence. Whether those were right who believed that mankind must always grow better, and that thoughts of a true order and worth of man 268 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION were no idle dreams, but the prophecy and pledge of the real world that is to be whether they are to be proved right, or those who continue to slumber in an animal and vegetable existence and mock at every flight into higher worlds to give a final and decisive judgment on this point is a work for you. The old world with its glory and its greatness, as well as its defects, has fallen by its own unworthiness and by the violence of your fathers. If there is truth in what has been expounded in these addresses, then are you of all modern peoples the one in whom the seed of human perfection most unmistakably lies, and to whom the lead in its development is committed. If you perish in this your essential nature, then there perishes together with you every hope of the whole human race for salvation from the depths of its miseries. Do not console yourselves with an opinion based on thin air and depending on the mere recurrence of cases that have already happened ; do not hope that when the old civilization has fallen a new one will arise once more out of a semi-barbarous nation on the ruins of the first. In ancient times there was such a people in existence, equipped with every requirement for such a destiny and quite well known to the civilized people, who have left us their description of it ; and they themselves, if they had been able to imagine their own downfall, would have been able to discover in this people the means of recon struction. To us also the whole surface of the globe is quite well known and all the peoples that dwell thereon. But do we know a people akin to the ancestral stock of the modern world, of whom we may have the same expectation ? I think that everyone who does not merely base his hopes and beliefs on idle dreaming, but investi gates thoroughly and thinks, will be bound to answer this question with a NO. There is, therefore, no way out ; CONCLUSION 269 if you go under, all humanity goes under with you, with out hope of any future restoration. This it was, gentlemen, which at the end of these addresses I wanted and was bound to impress upon you, who to me are the representatives of the nation, and through you upon the whole nation. FINIS PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY NEILL AND CO., LTD., EDINBURGH MAR 22 197? DD Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 199 Addresses to the German F533 nation PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY