Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/228

 doubts which hold the others fast. It will produce the textbooks and the first teachers, and lend them to the others. The State that follows it next will win the second place of honour. There is gratifying evidence that among the Germans the taste for higher things has never quite died out, for several German peoples and States have striven with one another for the honour of having the higher culture. Some have claimed to have more extensive freedom of the press and greater disregard for traditional opinion, others better organized schools and universities; some have cited former glory and merit, others something else; and the strife could not be decided. On the present occasion it will be decided. Only that education which dares to make itself universal and to include all men without distinction is a real part of life and is sure of itself. Any other is foreign trimming, put on simply for show and not even worn with right good conscience. It will now be revealed where the boasted culture exists only in a few people of the middle class, who show it in their writings (and such people are to be found in every German State), and where, on the other hand, it has reached also the higher classes who advise the State. Then it will be shown, too, how one has to judge the zeal displayed here and there for the erection and welfare of institutions for higher education; whether the motive was pure love of educating mankind, which would indeed treat with equal zeal every branch of education and especially the very first foundation, or mere passion for showing off and, perhaps, paltry schemes for making money.

173. The first German State to carry out this proposal will, I said, have the greatest glory. Yet it will not long stand alone, but will doubtless soon find imitators and rivals. The important thing is to make a