Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/291

 this gulf is not only the work of the man of affairs, who indeed must previously have learnt enough to be able to understand you, but the work also of you, who in the world of thought must not forget life. At this point both of you meet. Instead of looking askance at each other across the gulf and depreciating each other, rather let each party be zealous to fill up the gulf from his side and so pave the way to union. Finally, comprehend that both of you are as necessary to each other as head and arm are necessary to each other.

These addresses appeal solemnly in other respects as well to you, thinkers, scholars, and men of letters, to such of you as are still worthy of the name. Your complaints about the general shallowness, thoughtlessness, and vagueness, about conceitedness and the inexhaustible flow of idle chatter, about the contempt for seriousness and thoroughness that prevail in all classes, may be true, as indeed they are. But then, what class is it which has brought up all these classes, which has turned everything scientific into a game for them, and has trained them from their earliest youth to that conceitedness and idle chatter? Who is it that continues to instruct the generations that have left school? The most obvious cause of the stupidity of the age is that it has read itself stupid with the works which you have written. Why do you, nevertheless, continue to make it your business to keep such indolent people entertained, regardless of the fact that they have learnt nothing and want to learn nothing? Why do you call them “the public,” flatter them by making them your judges, set them on against your rivals, and seek by every means to win over this blind and confused mob to your side? Finally, why do you give them, even in your reviewing establishments and journals, not only the material, but also the model for their hasty judgments, by