Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/146

 Therefore, even should we be compelled to accept the boon of foreign forms and laws intended for us, at least let us not be unduly ashamed, as if our intelligence had been incapable of attaining these heights of legislation. As we are not inferior to any nation even in legislating, when we only have the pen in our hands, it may well be that we felt with regard to life that even the making of such laws was not the right thing; and so we preferred to let the old system stand until the perfect system should come to us, instead of merely exchanging the old fashion for a new one just as transitory.

97. Altogether different is the genuine German art of the State. It, too, seeks fixity, surety, and independence of blind and halting nature, and in this it is quite in agreement with foreign countries. But, unlike these, it does not seek a fixed and certain thing, as the first element, which will make the spirit, as the second element, certain; on the contrary, it seeks from the very beginning, and as the very first and only element, a firm and certain spirit. This is for it the mainspring, whose life proceeds from itself, and which has perpetual motion; the mainspring which will regulate, and continually keep in motion, the life of society. The German art of the State understands that it cannot create this spirit by reprimanding adults who are already spoilt by neglect, but only by educating the young, who are still unspoilt. Moreover, with this education it will not turn, as foreign countries do, to the solitary peak, the prince, but to the broad plain which is the nation; for indeed the prince, too, will without doubt be part of the nation. Just as the State, in the persons of its adult citizens, is the continued education of the human race, so must the future citizen himself, in the opinion of this art of the State, first be educated up to the point of being susceptible to