_ _ 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.
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 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 : 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 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_Q£j±u| ^^ 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 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 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~Breyr~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 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 germinates; a legislation which keeps the higher in view will allowT 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 government 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 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 \viningr~or™not, and to 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 nation1 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 wellbeing, 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 /<^,/ 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 belief—a 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 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 writh 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 fight for sever£l_^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, 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 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