Johann Gottlieb Fichte

“ Where is there in modern Europe a nation so lacking in honour that it could be trained up in this way? Even supposing that a world-conqueror succeeded in reshaping a nation in this fashion; the very means he takes to do it will frustrate the attainment of his object. Such a people will thenceforward regard the human beings, the countries, and the works of art that they have acquired by conquest, as nothing more than a means of making money with all speed, so that they may move on and make more money. ”

“ To begin with and before all things: the first, original, and truly natural boundaries of States are beyond doubt their internal boundaries. Those who speak the same language are joined to each other by a multitude of invisible bonds by nature herself, long before any human art begins; they understand each other and have the power of continuing to make themselves understood more and more clearly; they belong together and are by nature one and an inseparable whole. ”

“ For many centuries now the peoples of Europe have ceased to be savages or to rejoice in destructive activity for its own sake. All men seek behind war a final peace, behind exertion rest, behind confusion order; and all men want to see their career crowned with the peace of a quiet and domestic life. For a time they may be made enthusiastic for war even by the mere prospect of advantage to the nation ”

“ May it become the custom in our nation, not merely to think idly and as it were experimentally, just to see what will come of it, but to think in such a way that what we think shall be true and have a real effect in life! ”

“ Do not certain utterances, which would otherwise have to be taken as evidence of bitter scorn—for example, that they have been the first to bring a fatherland to German countries, which previously had none, or that they have abolished that slavish dependence of persons, as such, on other persons, which used to be established by law among us—do not such utterances, when we remember what we ourselves have said, show themselves as a repetition of our own statements and an echo of our own flattering speeches? ”

“ Must they not believe that, because of our great clumsiness and helplessness, we are bound to accept with the humblest thanks any and every thing out of the rich store of their art of government, administration, and legislation that they have already presented to us, or have in contemplation for us in the future? Is there any need for us to confirm their already not unfavourable opinion of themselves and the low opinion they have of us? ”

“ Now, at last, let us be bold enough to look at the deceptive vision of a universal monarchy, which people are beginning to hold up for public veneration in place of that equilibrium which for some time has been growing more and more preposterous, and let us perceive how hateful and contrary to reason that vision is. Spiritual nature was able to present the essence of humanity in extremely diverse gradations in individuals and in individuality as a whole, in peoples. ”

“ This well-known system of a balance of power in Europe, therefore, assumes two things: first, a prey to which no one at all has any right, but for which all have a like desire; and second, the universal, ever-present, and unceasingly active lust for booty. Indeed, on these assumptions, this balance of power would be the only means of maintaining peace, if only one could find the second means, namely, that of creating the equilibrium and transforming it from an empty thought into a thing of reality. ”

“ The abundant supplies of his own land, together with his own diligence, afford him all that is needed in the life of a civilized man; nor does he lack skill in the art of making his resources serve that purpose. As for acquiring the only true advantage that world-trade brings in its train, viz., the increase in scientific knowledge of the earth and its inhabitants, his own scientific spirit will not let him lack a means of exchange. O, if only his kindly fortune had preserved the German from indirect participation in the booty of other worlds, as it preserved him from direct participation! ”

“ Perhaps our descendants may do what we see ought to be done, just as we now suffer because our fathers dreamed. Let us understand that the conception of an equilibrium to be artificially maintained might have been a consoling dream for foreign countries amid the guilt and evil that oppressed them; but that this conception, being an entirely foreign product, ought never to have taken root in the mind of a German, and that the Germans ought never to have been so situated that it could take root among them. ”

“ As time went on, a kind fortune preserved it from direct participation in the conquest of other worlds—that event which, more than any other, has been the basis of the development taken by modern world-history, of the fates of peoples, and of the largest part of their ideas and opinions. Since that event, and not before, Christian Europe, which hitherto, without being clearly conscious of it, had been one, and by joint enterprises had shown itself to be one—Christian Europe, I say, split itself into various separate parts. ”

“ Far from me be the presumption of accusing any existing nation as a whole and without exception of such narrow-mindedness. Let us rather assume that here, too, those who express no opinion are the better sort. But if those who have appeared among us and expressed their opinions are to be judged by the opinions they have expressed, it seems to follow that they are to be placed in the class we have described. As such a statement appears to require proof, I adduce the following, passing over in silence the other manifestations of this spirit which are before the eyes of Europe. ”

“ The causes that have brought about Germany’s latest doom we have already indicated; these causes have for centuries been native to all German races without exception in the same way; the latest events are not the consequences of any particular error of any one race or its government; they have been in preparation long enough, and might just as well have happened to us long ago, if it had depended solely on the causes that lie within our own selves. ”

“ Let our standard of greatness be the old one: that alone is great which is capable of receiving the ideas which always bring nothing but salvation upon the peoples, and which is inspired by those ideas. ”

“ They knew how to present each of these separate States that had thus arisen in the lap of the one nation—which had no enemy except those foreign countries themselves, and no concern except the common one of setting itself with united strength against their seductive craft and cunning—foreign countries, I say, knew how to present each of these States to the others as a natural enemy, against which each State must be perpetually on its guard. ”

“ Thus was the German nation placed—sufficiently united within itself by a common language and a common way of thinking, and sharply enough severed from the other peoples—in the middle of Europe, as a wall to divide races not akin. The German nation was numerous and brave enough to protect its boundaries against any foreign attack ”

“ That opinion of the Romans as to the relationship of the conquered barbarians towards them, an opinion which in their case was founded on a view of things that had some excuse, the opinion that it was criminal rebellion and insurrection against divine and human laws to offer resistance to them, and that their arms could bring nothing but blessing to the nations, and their chains nothing but honour—it is this opinion that has been formed about us in these days; with great good-nature they expect us to hold it about ourselves, and they assume in advance that we do hold it. ”

“ Why should the old dream still be placed before our eyes, now that disaster has awakened us from sleep? Why should we not now at any rate see the truth and perceive the only means that could have saved us? ”

“ How shall those of us who are not guilty ward off the disgrace from our heads and let the guilty ones stand by themselves? There is a means. No more scurrilous denunciations will be printed the moment it is certain that no more will be bought, and as soon as their authors and publishers can no longer reckon on readers tempted to buy them for lack of something better to do, by idle curiosity and love of gossip, or by the malicious joy of seeing those men humiliated who at one time instilled into them the painful feeling of respect. ”

“ Then there are other peoples, whose ego is so closely wrapped up in itself that it never allows them the freedom to detach themselves for the purpose of taking a cool and calm view of what is foreign to them, and who are therefore compelled to believe that there is only one possible way of existence for a civilized human being, and that is always the way which some chance or other has indicated to them alone at the time ”

“ I can understand how such opinions may be held in earnest by people who are very conceited and narrow-minded, and how they can honestly impute the same belief to their opponents, just as I believe that the Romans really thought so; but I only raise a doubt as to whether those among us, whose conversion to that way of thinking is for ever impossible, can reckon upon an agreement of any kind whatever. ”

“ As for the writers who console us for all our ills with the prospect that we, too, shall be subjects of the new universal monarchy that is beginning—are we to believe them when they say that someone or other has decided upon such a grinding together of all the germs of what is human in humanity, in order to press the unresisting dough into some new form, and that so monstrous an act of brutality or enmity against the human race is possible in this age of ours? ”

“ Hence, the only means of maintaining peace is this: that no one shall acquire enough power to be able to disturb the peace, and that each one shall know that there is just as much strength to resist on the other side as there is to attack on his side; and that thus there may arise a balance and counterbalance of the total power whereby alone, now that all other means have vanished, each one is kept in possession of what he has at present and all are kept in peace. ”

“ True greatness has always had this further characteristic: it is filled with awe and reverence in the face of dark and mysterious fate, it is mindful of the ever-rolling wheel of destiny, and never allows itself to be counted great or happy before its end. ”

“ Between peoples of the former type there takes place an interaction of culture and education which is most beneficial to the development of man as such, and an interpenetration which none the less allows each one, with the goodwill of the other, to remain its own self. Peoples of the latter type are unable to form anything, for they are unable to apprehend anything in its actual state of existence; they only want to destroy everything that exists and to create everywhere, except in themselves, a void in which they can reproduce their own image and never anything else. ”

“ It may be that in every race of the German fatherland the blame falls with more reason on one special class, not because it did not have more insight or greater ability than all the others, for in that respect all were equally to blame, but because it pretended that it had more insight and greater ability, and kept everyone else away from the work of administration in the various States. ”

“ Obviously not from the limitation set by nature to human greed, viz., that superfluity is of no benefit to anyone; for there was a prey which tempted everyone. Just as little could he expect peace to come from the will to set a limit to one’s self; for, where everyone grabs for himself everything that he can, anyone who limits himself must of necessity go under. No one wants to share with another what he then owns himself; everyone wants to rob the other of what he has, if he possibly can. If one of them is quiet, it is only because he does not think himself strong enough to begin a quarrel ”

“ If they believed that the object of their pretended veneration was really great, they would humbly admit that he was exalted above their acclamations and laudation, and they would honour him by reverent silence. By making it their business to praise him they show that in fact they take him to be petty and base, and so vain that their hymns of praise can give him pleasure, and that they hope thereby to divert some evil from themselves, or procure themselves some benefit. ”

“ We shall bring the deep contempt of foreigners upon ourselves if in their hearing we accuse each other, German races, classes, and persons, of being responsible for the fate that has befallen every one of us, and bitterly and passionately reproach each other. ”

“ It means that the genius is so great that we, too, can fully understand it, the wisdom so profound that we, too, can see through it, the plan so comprehensive that we, too, are able to imitate it completely. ”

“ Another thing is that we give the impression of being driven to these paeans of praise chiefly by fear and terror; but there is nothing more ridiculous than a frightened man who praises the beauty and graciousness of a creature which in fact he takes to be a monster, and which he merely seeks to bribe by his flattery not to swallow him up. ”