Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/41

 future life. The enlightenment of the understanding, with its purely material calculations, was the force which destroyed the connection established by religion between some future life and the present, and which at the same time conceived that such substitutes and supplements of the moral sense as love of fame and national honour were but illusory phantoms. It was the weakness of governments which removed the individual’s fear for his own interests even in this life (in so far as they depended upon his behaviour towards the community) by frequently allowing neglect of duty to go unpunished. Similarly, it rendered the motive of hope ineffective by satisfying it frequently on quite different grounds and principles, without heed to services rendered to the community. Such were the ties which at some point were completely severed; and it was this severance that caused the breaking-up of the commonwealth.

Henceforth it matters not how industriously the conqueror may do that which he alone can do, namely, link up again and strengthen the latter part of the binding tie—fear and hope for this present life. He alone will profit thereby, and not we at all; for so surely as he perceives his advantage will he link to this renewed bond first and foremost only his own interests. Ours he will further only in so far as their preservation can serve as a means to his own ends. For a nation so ruined, fear and hope are henceforth completely destroyed, because control over them has now slipped from her hands, and because she herself indeed has to fear and hope, but no one henceforth either fears her or hopes for aught from her. There remains nothing for her but to find an entirely different and new binding tie that is superior to fear and hope, in order to link up the welfare of her whole being with the self-interest of each of her members.