natal city, to whose
immediate protection he was recommended; and partly of the entire
common fatherland of the German nation. Throughout the whole extent of
this fatherland each man might seek for himself that culture which was
most akin to his spirit, or he might search for the sphere of activity
most suited for it; and talent did not grow into its place, like a
tree, but he was permitted to search for that place. He who became
estranged from his immediate surroundings through the direction taken
by his culture, easily found welcome reception elsewhere; he found new
friends instead of those whom he had lost; he found time and quiet in
which to explain himself more accurately and perhaps to win over and
to reconcile the wrathful themselves, and thus to unite the whole. No
German-born prince could ever bring himself to mark off the fatherland
of his subjects within the mountains or rivers where he ruled, and to
regard them as bound to the soil. A truth which could not be uttered
in one place might be proclaimed in another, where, perhaps, on the
contrary, those truths were forbidden which were allowable in the
former district; and thus, despite many instances of partiality and
narrow-mindedness in the individual states, in Germany, taken as
a whole, was found the utmost freedom of investigation and of
communication that ever a nation possessed. Higher culture was, and
remained on every hand, the result of the reciprocity of the citizens
of all German states, and this higher culture then gradually descended
in this form to the greater masses, who, consequently, have always,
on the whole, continued to educate themselves. As has been said, no
German with a German heart, placed at the head of a government, has
ever diminished this essential pledge of the continuance of a German
nation; and even though, in view of other primitive decisions, what
the higher German patriotism must desire was not invariably to
be effected, yet at least there was no direct opposition to its
interests; no effort was made to undermine that love, to eradicate it,
and to replace it by an antagonistic love.

But if, now, the original guidance both of that higher culture and
of the national power--which should be used only in behalf of that
culture and to further its continuance--the employment of German
wealth and German blood is to pass from the supremacy of the German
spirit to that of another, what would then necessarily result?

Here is the pl