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.]
*• and which exists for its_own_sake, but is. merely the means to the higher £u££ose__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 nru 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 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 onesidedness 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 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 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 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 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 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. V7hereas 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 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 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 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, 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 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,