Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/235

 TWELFTH ADDRESS CONCERNING THE MEANS FOR OUR PRESERVATION UNTIL WE ATTAIN OUR MAIN OBJECT

178. education which we propose to the Germans as their future national education has now been sufficiently described. When once the generation that has been formed by this education is in existence—a generation impelled by its taste for the right and the good and by nothing else whatever; a generation provided with an understanding that is adequate for its standpoint and recognizes the right unfailingly on every occasion; a generation equipped with full power, both physical and spiritual, to carry out its will on every occasion—when once this generation is in existence, everything that we can long for in our boldest wishes will come into being of itself from the very existence of that generation, and will grow out of it naturally. That age is in so little need of any rules we can make for its guidance that we should rather have to learn from it.

Since this generation is in the meantime not in existence, but must first be raised up by education, and since, even if everything else should go on excellently and beyond our expectation, we shall nevertheless require a considerable interval before we pass over to that new age, the more urgent question arises: How are we to manage to get through this interval? Since we can do nothing