Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/292

 delivering judgment yourselves as the fancy seizes you, without any connecting principle and usually without taste, in a way that the meanest of your readers could equal? If you do not all think like this, if even yet there are better-disposed writers among you, why do they not unite to put an end to the evil? Especially with reference to our men of business; they ran through a course at school under you; you say it yourselves. Why did you not make use of the time they spent with you to instil into them at any rate some silent respect for the sciences, and especially to shatter betimes the conceit of high-born youths and to show them that, when it comes to thinking, neither rank nor birth are of any avail? If perchance even at that time you flattered them and gave them prominence beyond their merits, you must now bear the burden of what you yourselves have created.

They are willing to pardon you, these addresses, on the assumption that you had not grasped the importance of your business; they solemnly appeal to you to make yourselves acquainted from this very hour with its importance, and no longer to carry it on as if it were merely a trade. Learn to respect yourselves, show by your actions that you do so, and the world will respect you. The first proof of it you will give by the influence you yourselves exert on the resolution that is here proposed, and by the way in which you conduct yourselves in connection therewith.

225. These addresses appeal solemnly to you, princes of Germany. Those who in their dealings with you act as if no one ought to say anything whatever to you, or could have occasion to say anything, are contemptible flatterers; they wickedly slander you and no one else; put them far from you. The truth is that you are born just as ignorant as all the rest of us, and that you must