Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/143

 What, too, will all who follow its example regard as the art of the State? Undoubtedly it will be the art of finding a similarly fixed and dead order of things, from which condition of death the living movement of society is to proceed, and to proceed as this art intends. This intention is to make the whole of life in society into a large and ingeniously constructed clockwork pressure-machine, in which every single part will be continually compelled by the whole to serve the whole. The intention is to do a sum in arithmetic with finite and given quantities, and produce from them an ascertainable result; and thus, on the assumption that everyone seeks his own well-being, to compel everyone against his wish and will to promote the general well-being. Non-German countries have repeatedly enunciated this principle and produced ingenious specimens of this art of social machinery. The motherland has adopted the theory, and developed its application in the construction of social machines; and here, too, as always, in a manner that is deeper, truer, more thoroughgoing, and much superior to its models. If at any time there is a stoppage in the accustomed process of society, such artists of the State can give no other explanation than that perhaps one of the wheels has become worn out, and they know no other remedy than to remove the defective wheels and insert new ones. The more deeply rooted anyone is in this mechanical view of society, and the better he understands how to simplify the mechanism by making all the parts of the machine as alike as possible and by treating them all as if they were of the same material, the higher is his reputation as an artist of the State in this age of ours: and rightly so, for things are even worse when those in control hesitate and come to no decision and are incapable of any definite opinion.