Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/254

 and have the power of continuing to make themselves understood more and more clearly; they belong together and are by nature one and an inseparable whole. Such a whole, if it wishes to absorb and mingle with itself any other people of different descent and language, cannot do so without itself becoming confused, in the beginning at any rate, and violently disturbing the even progress of its culture. From this internal boundary, which is drawn by the spiritual nature of man himself, the marking of the external boundary by dwelling-place results as a consequence; and in the natural view of things it is not because men dwell between certain mountains and rivers that they are a people, but, on the contrary, men dwell together—and, if their luck has so arranged it, are protected by rivers and mountains—because they were a people already by a law of nature which is much higher.

199. Thus was the German nation placed—sufficiently united within itself by a common language and a common way of thinking, and sharply enough severed from the other peoples—in the middle of Europe, as a wall to divide races not akin. The German nation was numerous and brave enough to protect its boundaries against any foreign attack; it was left to itself, and by its whole way of thinking was little inclined to take notice of the neighbouring peoples, to interfere in their affairs, or to provoke them to enmity by disturbances. As time went on, a kind fortune preserved it from direct participation in the conquest of other worlds—that event which, more than any other, has been the basis of the development taken by modern world-history, of the fates of peoples, and of the largest part of their ideas and opinions. Since that event, and not before, Christian Europe, which hitherto, without being clearly conscious of it, had been