Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/222

 is a guarantee against the need in later years of reformation and penal discipline, which are very doubtful measures, while in a nation so trained there are no poor at all.

168. May the State and all its advisers dare to look its true present position in the face and acknowledge it! May it realize vividly that, apart from the education of the succeeding generations, there remains absolutely no sphere, in which it can act originally and independently like a real State, and make decisions! May it see that, if it does not want to do nothing at all, there is but this that it can still do, and may it realize, too, that no one will envy or detract from the merit of this service! The fact that we can no longer make active resistance has already been postulated by us as obvious, and is admitted by everyone. Now, how can we justify the continuance of our forfeited existence against the reproach of cowardice and of an unworthy love of life? In no other way than by deciding not to live for ourselves, and by proving this in action; by being willing to make ourselves the seed of a more worthy posterity and, for its sake alone, to maintain ourselves until we have set it up. Deprived of that chief aim in life, what can we do? Our constitutions will be made for us; our alliances and the employment of our fighting forces will be prescribed to us; a code of law will be given to us; even justice and judgment and their administration will sometimes be taken from us. For the immediate future we shall be spared the trouble of these matters. It is only of education that no one has thought; if we are looking for an occupation, let us seize this! We may expect to be left in it undisturbed. I hope—perhaps I deceive myself in this, but as I care to live only for that hope, I cannot give up hoping—I hope that I shall convince some