Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/72

 33. I proceed now, by means of the following propositions, to give the further reasons I promised for the statement that in the pupil of the new education no knowledge can remain dead, and to fulfil my intention of elevating into a connected system all that has been said.

From what has been said it follows that from the point of view of their education there are two quite different and entirely opposite classes of men. At first every human being (and, therefore, also these two classes) is alike in this, that underlying the various manifestations of his life there is one impulse, which amid all change persists unchanged and is always the same. Incidentally, the self-comprehension of this impulse and its translation into ideas creates the world, and there is no other world but this world which is created thus in thought, not freely but of necessity. Now this impulse, which must always be translated into consciousness (and in this respect, once again, the two classes are alike), can be so translated in two ways, according to the two different kinds of consciousness. It is in the method of translation and of self-comprehension that the two classes differ.

The first kind of consciousness, that which is the first in point of time to develop, is that of dim feeling. Where this feeling exists, the fundamental impulse is most usually and regularly comprehended as the individual’s love of self; indeed, dim feeling shows this self at first only as something that wills to live and to prosper. Hence, material self-seeking arises as the real motive and developing power of such a life engrossed in translating its original impulse thus. So long as man continues to understand himself in this way, so long must he act selfishly, being unable to do otherwise; and, amid the ceaseless change in his life, it is this self-seeking alone that persists, always the same and to be expected with certainty. This