Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/131

 stimulus to the Germans, from whom it had first proceeded 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 themselves 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 discovering the supersensuous (which is, of course, not to be believed in on external authority) in the reason itself, and thus of creating for the first time true philosophy by making free thought the source of independent truth, as it should be. To that end Leibniz strove in his conflict with that foreign philosophy; and the end was attained by the true founder of modern German philosophy, 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 of 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 took up lightly, and