Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/140

 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 you are to see differently, you must first of all become different. Now, the inner essence of non-German ways, or of non-originality, 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. They inevitably believe in death 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.