Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/285

 before your eyes. Do not lay them aside until you have made up your minds. Do not, O, do not allow yourselves to relax by trusting in others or in anything whatever that lies outside yourselves, nor yet by the foolish wisdom of the time, which holds that the ages make themselves, without any human aid, by means of some unknown force. These addresses have not grown weary of impressing upon you that nothing whatever can help you except yourselves; and they find it necessary to repeat it up to the last moment. It may be that rain and dew and fruitful or unfruitful seasons are made by a force unknown to us and not in our power; but all human relationships, the whole special province of man, are made only by men themselves and by absolutely no power outside them. Only when they are all equally blind and ignorant do they fall victims to this hidden power; but it rests with them not to be blind and ignorant. It is true that the degree of evil, be it greater or less, which will befall us may depend partly on that unknown power; but it will depend very specially on the understanding and goodwill of those to whom we are subjected. But whether it will ever go well with us again depends entirely on ourselves; and it is certain that no well-being whatever will come to us again unless we procure it for ourselves, and especially unless each one of us, in his own way, acts and works as if he were alone, and as if upon him alone depended the salvation of generations to come.

221. This is what you have to do. These addresses solemnly appeal to you to do it without delay.

To you, young men, they solemnly appeal. I, who have long ceased to belong to your ranks, am of the opinion, which I have expressed in these addresses, that you are even more capable than others of any thought that lies outside the common round, and more susceptible