of change or of improvement. If
you have heard this, and if it was capable of rousing your
indignation--well then, through your very actions, give the lie to
those who thus think and speak of you. Once show yourselves to be
different before the eyes of all the world, and before the eyes of all
the world they will be convicted of their falsehood. It may be that
they have spoken thus harshly of you with the precise intention of
forcing this refutation from you, and because they despaired of any
other means of arousing you. How much better, then, would have been
their intentions toward you than were the purposes of those who
flattered you that you might be kept in sluggish calm and in careless
thoughtlessness!

However weak and powerless you may be, during this period clear and
calm reflection has been vouchsafed you as never before. What
really plunged us into confusion regarding our position, into
thoughtlessness, into a blind way of letting things go, was our sweet
complacency with ourselves and our mode of existence. Things had thus
gone on hitherto, and so they continued and would continue to go. If
any one challenged us to reflect, we triumphantly showed him, instead
of any other refutation, our continued existence which went on without
any thought or effort on our part; yet things flowed along simply
because we were not put to the test. Since that time we have passed
through the ordeal and it might be supposed that the deceptions, the
delusions, and the false consolations with which we all misguided one
another would have collapsed! The innate prejudices which, without
proceeding from this point or from that, spread over all like a
natural cloud and wrapped all in the same mist, ought surely, by this
time, to have utterly vanished! That twilight no longer obscures our
eyes, and can therefore no longer serve for an excuse. Now we stand,
naked and bare, stripped of all alien coverings and draperies, simply
as ourselves. Now it must appear what each self is, or is not.

Some one among you might come forward and ask me "What gives you in
particular, the only one among all German men and authors, the special
task, vocation, and prerogative of convening us and inveighing against
us? Would not any one among the thousands of the writers of Germany
have exactly the same right to do this as you have? None of them does
it; you alone push yourself forward." I answer that each one would,
indeed, have had the same right as I,