Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/51

 aimless game; if it did not produce such a character it would still be incomplete. He who must still exhort himself, and be exhorted, to will the good, has as yet no firm and ever-ready will, but wills a will anew every time he needs it. But he who has such a stable will, wills what he wills for ever, and cannot under any circumstances will otherwise than he always wills. For him freedom of the will is destroyed and swallowed up in necessity. The past age had neither a true conception of education for manhood nor the power to realize that conception. It showed this by wanting to improve mankind by warning sermons, and by being angry and scolding when these sermons were of no avail. Yet how could they avail aught? Before the warning, and independent of it, the will of man has already its definite bent. If this agrees with your exhortation, the latter comes too late; without it he would have done what you exhort him to. If this bent and your exhortation are in opposition, you may at most bewilder him for a few moments; when the time comes, he forgets himself and your exhortation, and follows his natural inclination. If you want to influence him at all, you must do more than merely talk to him; you must fashion him, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than you wish him to will. It is idle to say: Fly—for he has no wings, and for all your exhortations will never rise two steps above the ground. But develop, if you can, his spiritual wings; let him exercise them and make them strong, and without any exhortation from you he will want, and will be able, to do nothing but fly.

15. The new education must produce this stable and unhesitating will according to a sure and infallible rule. It must itself inevitably create the necessity at which it aims. Those who in the past became good did so thanks