Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/248

 willing to hear all things; but at this time we cannot concern ourselves with that; we are urged on by necessity, and we must say just what necessity orders us to say. We are fighting for life; do they want us to walk delicately, lest some robe of state be covered with the dust we may raise? We are sinking in the water-floods; are we to refrain from calling for help, lest some weak-nerved neighbour may be alarmed?

194. For, who are they who might not like to hear it, and on what condition might they not like to hear it? In every case it is only obscurity and darkness which cause alarm. Every terrifying vision vanishes when one gazes at it firmly. With the same unconcern and directness, with which we have hitherto analysed every subject that has occurred in these addresses, let us look this terror, too, in the face.

We must assume either that the being to whom at the present time the conduct of a great part of the world’s affairs has fallen is a truly great soul, or we must assume the contrary; no third assumption is possible. In the first case: on what is all human greatness based, if not on the independence and originality of the person and on the fact that the person is not an artificial product of his age, but a growth out of the eternal and spontaneous spirit-world, which has grown up just as it is? Is not greatness based on the fact that to one person a new and individual view of the universe has dawned, and that this person has the firm will and the iron strength to impose his view on the actual world? But it is quite impossible for such a soul not to honour in peoples and individuals external to himself that in which his own internal greatness consists, viz., independence, constancy, and individuality of existence. In proportion as the great soul feels