Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/49

 SECOND ADDRESS THE GENERAL NATURE OF THE NEW EDUCATION

13. addresses should lead you first of all, and with you the whole nation, to a clear perception of the remedy which I have proposed for the preservation of the German nation. Such a remedy follows from the nature of the age as well as of the German national characteristics, and must in turn influence the age and the moulding of those national characteristics. This remedy, therefore, does not become perfectly clear and intelligible until it is compared with the latter, and these with it, and both are represented in complete connection with each other. For these tasks time is needed; perfect clearness, therefore, is to be expected only at the end of our addresses. But, since we must begin at some point, it will be most convenient first of all to consider the inner nature of that remedy by itself, apart from its relations in time and space. Our address to-day, therefore, will be devoted to this task.

The remedy indicated was an absolutely new system of German national education, such as has never existed in any other nation. In the last address this new education, as distinguished from the old, was described thus: the existing education has at most only exhorted to good order and morality, but these exhortations have been unfruitful in real life, which has been moulded on