lasses 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.

[Illustration: FLAX BARN IN LAREN _From the Painting by Max
Liebermann_]

It will appear in the course of this address that hitherto all the
advance in the German nation has originated with the common
people, and that hitherto all the great national interests have, in
the first instance, been the affair of the people, have been taken in
hand and pushed forward by the body of the people; so that today for
the first time does it happen that the initiative in the cultural
advance of the nation is committed to the hands of the cultured
classes, and if they will but accept the commission it will be the
first time when such has been the case. It will presently appear that
it is quite impossible for these classes to determine how long the
matter will yet rest in their discretion, how long the choice will yet
be open to them whether to take the initiative in this matter or not,
for the whole matter is nearly ripe to be taken in hand by the people,
and it will be carried out by men sprung from the body of the people,
who will presently be able to help themselves without assistance from
us."

Fichte, then, knew and proclaimed this fact, that the realization of
all the great national interests in the past has been the work of the
common people and has never been carried out at the hands of the
cultured classes. That, in spite of this knowledge, he turned to the
cultured classes is due, as he himself says, to the hope he had of
first and most readily making himself understood by them. It is
because, in his apprehension, for the presentment of the matter to the
people, the whole was, so he says, "only approaching readiness and
maturity," but not yet ready and mature.

That it is possible today to do what in Fichte's time was recognized
as the only fruitful thing to do, but, at the same time, as not then
ready to be done, and therefore too serious to be undertaken,--this
expresses the whole short step in advance that has been accomplished
in Germany during the past fifty years; for you will seek in vain for
the slightest progress on the part of the German government.

Fichte himself, in the passage cited, says that this advan