Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/42

 7. Above the material motive of fear or hope, and bordering immediately upon it, there is the spiritual motive of moral approval or disapproval, and the higher feeling of pleasure or displeasure at the condition of ourselves and of others. The physical eye, when accustomed to cleanliness and order, is troubled and distressed, as though actually hurt, by a spot which indeed causes the body no actual injury, or by the sight of objects lying in chaotic confusion; while the eye accustomed to dirt and disorder is quite comfortable under such circumstances. So, too, the inner mental eye of man can be so accustomed and trained that the very sight of a muddled and disorderly, unworthy and dishonourable existence of its own or of a kindred race causes it intense pain, apart from anything there may be to fear or to hope from this for its own material welfare. This pain, apart again from material fear or hope, permits the possessor of such an eye no rest until he has removed, in so far as he can, this condition which displeases him, and has set in its place that which alone can please him. For the possessor of such an eye, because of this stimulating feeling of approval or disapproval, the welfare of his whole environment is bound up inextricably with the welfare of his own wider self, which is conscious of itself only as part of the whole and can endure itself only when the whole is pleasing. To educate itself to possess such an eye will, therefore, be a sure means, and indeed the only means left to a nation which has lost her independence and with it all influence over public fear and hope, of rising again into life from the destruction she has suffered, and of entrusting her national welfare, which since her downfall neither God nor man has heeded, with confidence to this new and higher feeling that has arisen. It follows, then, that the means of salvation which I promised to indicate