ked with pride on the gigantic
workings of German science, but he perceived, with bitter sorrow, that
millions of his countrymen were separated by a deep chasm from the
highest results of scientific labour. He found himself amidst the
working of a popular energy, which ventured with heroic courage on the
boldest conclusions in the realm of mind; and, on the other hand, saw
around him narrow-hearted obstinacy, where simple and close results
ought to have been the aim. He felt with thousands an eager desire for
an object of life which would exalt and animate him, and again he found
himself surrounded and shackled by narrow-mindedness and by provincial
and local exclusiveness. Whoever should thus feel, may well inquire
whether we Germans are old or young, whether it is destined by fate
that the German nature should only find expression in the individual
virtuosoship of art and science, or whether an harmonious development
of the nation in its practical and ideal tendencies, in labour and
enjoyment. State, church, science, art, and industry, lies before us in
the future: whether we shall ever again, as members of a great State,
play the part of masters in Europe, which old records inform us our
ancestors, in remote ages, won by their swords and the energy of their
natures. There is still a time in our memory when hope was so faint,
that one may be excused for giving a doubtful answer to such questions.

After the War of Freedom, the decay of the old method of culture became
the characteristic of the time; but we now approach, with youthful
vigour, new ideas and an energetic will, to a new and higher climax. In
the characters of that past time we find, only too frequently,
isolation, hopelessness, and deficiency in political morality; in the
new time we have a sharper vision, a higher interest for the nation as
a whole, and a power of viewing things in a practical light which makes
us feel the need of close union between all of like mind. The realism,
which is called, either in praise or blame, the stamp of the present
time, is in art, science, and faith, as in the State, nothing but the
first step in the cultivation of the rising generation, which
endeavours to spiritualise the details of present life in all
directions, in order to give a new tendency to the spirit.

But, though it may be no longer necessary to cheer the soul with hope,
yet it is a pleasing task to demonstrate the point to which we have
attained in compari