Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/183

 have been the wish of every sensible person for the sake of the more remote consequences, must have desired right to prevail, no matter on what side it might be. A particular German State could, at most, have aimed at uniting the whole German nation under its sway, and at introducing autocracy in place of the established republic of peoples. Suppose, as I for instance of course maintain, that it is just this republican constitution that has hitherto been the best source of German civilization and the chief guarantee of its individuality. Then, if the unity of government which we are presupposing had itself borne, not the republican, but the monarchical form, under which it would have been possible for the autocrat to nip in the bud for his lifetime any new branch of original culture throughout the whole German soil—if my supposition is true, I say, it would certainly have been a great disaster for the cause of German love of fatherland, if that plan had succeeded, and every man of noble mind throughout the whole length and breadth of the common soil would have been bound to resist it. Yet, even in this most unfortunate event, it would always have been Germans who ruled over Germans and were the original directors of their affairs. Even if for a short period the characteristic German spirit had been lacking, there would still have remained the hope that it would awake again, and every stout heart throughout the whole country could have expected to get a hearing and to make itself intelligible. A German nation would always have remained in existence and have ruled itself, and would not have sunk into an existence of a lower order. Here the essential point in our calculation is always that German national love itself either is at the helm of the German State or can reach it with its influence. But if, according to our previous supposition, the control of the German