Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/169

 germinates; a legislation which keeps the higher culture in view will allow to freedom as wide a field as possible, even at the risk of securing a smaller degree of uniform peace and quietness, and of making the work of government a little harder and more troublesome.

118. To illustrate this by an example. It has happened that nations have been told to their face that they do not need so much freedom as many other nations do. It may even be that the form in which the opinion is expressed is considerate and mild, if what is really meant is that the particular nation would be quite unable to stand so much freedom, and that nothing but extreme severity could prevent its members from destroying each other. But, when the words are taken as meaning what they say, they are true only on the supposition that such a nation is thoroughly incapable of having original life or even the impulse towards it. Such a nation—if a nation could exist in which there were not even a few men of noble mind to make an exception to the general rule—would in fact need no freedom at all, for this is needed only for the higher purposes that transcend the State. It needs only to be tamed and trained, so that the individuals may live peaceably with each other and that the whole may be made into an efficient instrument for arbitrary purposes in which the nation as such has no part. Whether this can be said with truth of any nation at all we may leave undecided; this much is clear, that an original people needs freedom, that this is the security for its continuance as an original people, and that, as it goes on, it is able to stand an ever-increasing degree of freedom without the slightest danger. This is the first matter in respect of which love of fatherland must govern the State itself.

119. Then, too, it must be love of fatherland that