Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/271

 Moreover, if the State shall require my money for the pay of its armies or the support of its provinces; or the division of my goods for the maintenance of a larger population; I shall be ready at all times to deliver them up into its hands. I promise you, you shall not see me shrink from my duty. Should the State not require this sacrifice at my hands, and should I leave my possessions to my children; then I have educated them so that they shall use these possessions as I have used them, and shall teach their successors to act as I have acted, even to the end of time.’

Such is public and universal Good Manners. How far such Manners have attained dominion in our own Age, in those countries where the State and its Citizens have attained the highest point of Culture, in comparison with earlier Ages; in what respects the Age is yet defective, and how our Race must next proceed forward to higher attainments;—this I leave to the judgment of those among you who have opportunities of making observations upon this matter, and I do so the more readily that I myself have not possessed such opportunities, particularly as regards the relation of the Cultivated Classes to the People, for a long series of years,—and in certain countries have never possessed them at all. I had nothing more to do than to set forth in general the principles upon which such a judgment ought to proceed. Briefly to recount these once more:—Herein consists the true vocation and worth of Man,—that he, with all he is, has, and can do, should devote himself to the service of the Race;—and since, and in so far as, the State determines the form and mode of the service which this Race does actually need, that he should devote himself to the service of the State. In what mode, chosen by himself, or assigned to him by the State, each man may do this, is of little moment, but only that he do it: and each one is to be honoured not according to the mode in which he performs this service, but