Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/38

 to my other task, namely, to put before you in a general survey the contents of all the addresses that are to follow.

4. At some point, I said at the beginning of my address, self-seeking has destroyed itself by its own complete development, because thereby it has lost its self and the power of fixing its aims independently. This destruction of self-seeking, now accomplished, constitutes both that progress of the age which I have mentioned and the completely new event which, in my opinion, has made a continuation of my previous description of that age both possible and necessary. This destruction would, therefore, be our real present, to which our new life in a new world (the existence of which I likewise maintained) would have to be directly linked. It would, therefore, be also the proper starting-point for my addresses, and I should have to show above all how and why such a destruction of self-seeking must result inevitably from its highest development.

Self-seeking is most highly developed when, after it has first affected, with insignificant exceptions, the whole body of subjects, it thereupon masters the rulers and becomes their sole motive in life. In such a government there arises first of all, outwardly, the neglect of all the ties by which its own safety is bound up with the safety of other States, the abandoning of the whole, of which it is a part, solely in order that it may not be roused from its slothful sleep, and the sad illusion of self-seeking that it has peace, if only its own frontiers are not attacked; then, inwardly, that feeble handling of the reins of State which calls itself in alien words humanity, liberality, and popularity, but which in German is more truly called slackness and unworthy conduct.

When it masters the rulers too, I said. A people can