Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/236

 better, how are we to maintain ourselves at any rate as the soil on which the improvement may take place, and as the point of departure at which this improvement may begin its work? When once the generation formed in this way emerges from its seclusion and appears among us, how are we to prevent it from finding among us actual conditions that have not the slightest relationship to the order of things which it has conceived as embodying the right—actual conditions under which no one understands it or has the slightest wish for, or need of, such an order of things, but, on the contrary, regards the existing state of things as entirely natural and the only one possible? Would not those who have another world in their hearts soon become confused; and in this case would not the new education be just as useless for the improvement of actual life as the former education, and lose its savour in the same way?

179. If the majority of people continue in their previous state of heedlessness, thoughtlessness, and lack of concentration, this very result may be expected as inevitable. He who lets himself go without paying heed to himself, and allows himself to be moulded by circumstances just as they please, soon accustoms himself to any possible order of things. However much his eye may have been offended by something when he first saw it, let it only present itself anew every day in the same way and he accustoms himself to it. Later, he finds it natural, and in the end he even gets to like it as something inevitable; he would not thank you for the restoration of the original and better state of things, because this would tear him out of the mode of life to which he has become accustomed. In this way men become accustomed even to slavery, if only their material existence is not thereby affected, and in time they get to like it. It is just this