Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/530

 that in this place and day it should occur to any one to fancy that the place in which an address is delivered has anything whatever to do with its scientific character.

The great destiny of our age is precisely this—which the dark ages had been unable to conceive, much less to achieve—the dissemination of scientific knowledge among the body of the people. The difficulties of this task may be serious enough, and we may magnify them as we like,—still, our endeavors are ready to wrestle with them and our nightly vigils will be given to overcoming them.

In the general decay which, as all those who know the profounder realities of history appreciate, has overtaken European history in all its bearings, there are but two things that have retained their vigor and their propagating force in the midst of all that shriveling blight of self-seeking that pervades European life. These two things are science and the people, science and the workingman. And the union of these two is alone capable of invigorating European culture with a new life.

The union of these two polar opposites of modern society, science and the workingman,—when these two join forces they will crush all obstacles to cultural advance with an iron hand, and it is to this union that I have resolved to devote my life so long as there is breath in my body.

But, Gentlemen, is this view something new and entirely unheard-of in the realm of science? Let us see what Fichte himself, in his Addresses to the German People, has to say to the cultured classes, to whom he addresses these words: "It is particularly to the cultured classes of Germany that I wish to direct my remarks in the present address, for it is to these classes I hope in the first place to make myself intelligible. And I implore these classes, then, as the first step to be taken, to take the initiative in the work of reconstruction, and so, on the one hand, atone for their past deeds, and, on the other hand, earn the right to continued life in the future. It will appear in the course of this address that hitherto all the advance in the German nation