nd makes it a
criminal offense,--_crimen novum atque inauditum_.[54]

I might, of course, content myself with the answer that the substance
of an address, and therefore its scientific character, is in no way
affected by the place in which it happens to have been delivered,
whether it is in the Academy of Science, before the cream of the
learned world, or in a hall in the suburbs before an audience of
machinists.

But I owe you, Gentlemen, a somewhat fuller answer. To begin with, let
me express my amazement at the fact that here in Berlin, in the city
where Fichte delivered his immortal popular lectures on philosophy, his
speeches on the fundamental features of the modern epoch and his
speeches on the German nation before the general public, 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 c