Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/272

 their blame is indestructible, only in order that they may not be repeated in the future; and is it solely their zeal to bring about a thorough improvement in human affairs which makes them so bold in disregarding all considerations of prudence and decency? Gladly would we credit them with such goodwill, if only they were entitled by thorough insight and thorough understanding to have goodwill in this matter. It is not so much the particular persons who happen to have been in the highest places, but the connection and complication of the whole, the whole spirit of the age, the errors, the ignorance, shallowness, timidity, and the uncertain tread inseparable from these things, it is the whole way of life of the age that has brought these miseries upon us; and so it is far less the persons who have acted than the places; it is everyone’s fault; and everyone, even the violent fault-finders themselves, may assume with great probability that if they had been in the same place they would have been forced by their surroundings to much the same end. Let us not dream so much of deliberate wickedness and treachery! Stupidity and indolence are in nearly every case sufficient to explain the things that have happened; and this is a charge of which no one should entirely clear himself without searching self-examination. Especially in a state of affairs where there is in the whole mass a very great measure of indolence, the individual who is to force his way through must possess the power of action in a very high degree. So, even if the mistakes of individuals are ever so sharply singled out, that does not in any way lay bare the cause of the evil; nor is this cause removed by avoiding these mistakes in future. So long as men remain liable to error, they cannot do otherwise than commit errors; and even if they avoid those of their predecessors, in the infinite space of liability to error they will all too