Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/82

 FOURTH ADDRESS THE CHIEF DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE GERMANS AND THE OTHER PEOPLES OF TEUTONIC DESCENT

41. have said that the means of educating a new, which is being put forward in these addresses, must first be applied by Germans to Germans, and that it concerns our nation in a special and peculiar way. This statement also requires proof; and here, as before, we shall begin with what is highest and most general, showing what is the characteristic of the German as such, apart from the fate that has now befallen him; showing, too, that this has been his characteristic ever since he began to exist; and pointing out how this characteristic in itself gives him alone, above all other European nations, the capacity of responding to such an education.

42. In the first place, the German is a branch of the Teutonic race. Of the latter it is sufficient to say here that its mission was to combine the social order established in ancient Europe with the true religion preserved in ancient Asia, and in this way to develop in and by itself a new and different age after the ancient world had perished. Further, it is sufficient to distinguish the German particularly, in contrast only to the other Teutonic peoples who came into existence with him. Other neo-European nations, as, for instance, those of Slav descent, do not seem as yet to have developed distinctly enough in comparison