s through
a faultless link, we may connect ourselves with the same glorious
lineage. Cause us not to be compelled to be ashamed of our descent
from you as a descent that is low, barbarous, and slavish, so that
we must conceal our ancestry or must feign an alien name and an alien
lineage, lest we be immediately rejected or trodden under foot without
further test. On the next generation that will proceed from you, will
depend your fame in history: honorable, if this honorably witnesses
for you; but ignominious, even beyond desert, if you have no offspring
to speak for you, and if it is left to the victor to write your
history. Never yet has a victor had sufficient inclination or
sufficient knowledge rightly to judge the conquered. The more he
abases them, the more justified does he appear. Who can know what
mighty deeds, what magnificent institutions, and what noble customs of
many a people of antiquity have been forgotten because their posterity
was subjugated, and because, ungainsaid, the conqueror made his report
upon them in accordance with his interests?

Even foreign lands adjure you so far as they still understand
themselves in the very least, and still have an eye for their true
advantage. Indeed, there are spirits among all peoples who still
cannot believe that the great promises made to the human race of a
reign of justice, of reason, and of truth can be a vain and an empty
phantom, and who assume, therefore, that the present iron age is but
a transit to a better state. They--and all modern humanity in
them--count on you. A great part of this humanity is descended from
us; the rest have received from us religion and culture. The former
adjure us by the soil of our common fatherland, which is also their
cradle, and which they have bequeathed free to us; the latter adjure
us by the culture which they have acquired from us as a pledge of a
higher happiness--they adjure us to maintain ourselves as we have ever
been, for their sake; and not to suffer this member, which is of so
much importance, to be torn from the continuity of the race that is
newly budded, lest they may painfully miss us if they some time need
our counsel, our example, our cooperation toward the true goal of
earthly life.

All generations, all the wise and good who have ever breathed upon
this earth, all their thoughts and aspirations for something higher
mingle in these voices and surround you and lift to you imploring
hands. Even Providence, i