Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/133

 it of freedom, and to introduce into it also the freethinking of antiquity. Foreign countries provided the stimulus to this step; the German took the step. The second step, which is really the continuation and completion of the first, namely, to discover in our own selves this religion, and with it all wisdom—this, too, was prepared 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 was 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.