Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/288

 come to the front which you had not known about or done, that you regarded every stirring of thought as an insult to your intelligence, and that you left no power unused by which you might become the victors in this fight against the better, as indeed you were generally the victors. Thus, you were the force which held up all the improvements which kindly nature offered to us from her ever-youthful lap, until you were gathered to the dust (dust that you were already!), and the younger generation in the war with you had become like you and took over your old way of administration. You only need to act now as you have hitherto acted in regard to all proposals for improvement; you only need to put higher than the common weal your vanity in regarding it as a point of honour that there shall be nothing under heaven that you have not already discovered; then, by this last fight you will be spared any further fighting; no improvement will take place, but deterioration will follow on deterioration, so that you will still have many an occasion to rejoice.

I do not want you to think that I despise old age as such, or run it down. If only the source of original life and of its continued movement has by means of freedom been taken up into life, clearness grows, and power with it, so long as life lasts. Such a life becomes better as it is lived, the clay of its earthly origin falling away more and more; it ennobles itself and reaches upwards towards eternal life and blossoms out to meet it. In such a life experience does not reconcile itself to evil, but only makes clearer the means, and brings more skill in the art, of fighting evil triumphantly. For the deterioration due to increasing age, the times we live in are solely to blame; such deterioration must be the result wherever society is very corrupt. It is not nature that corrupts us; nature