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, and that I do it for the very reason that no one among them has done it before me; that I would be silent if any one else had spoken previous to me.  This was the first step toward the goal of a radical amelioration, and some one must take it.  I seemed to be the first vividly to perceive this—­accordingly, it was I who first took it.  After this, a second step will be taken, and thereto every one has now the same right; but, as a matter of fact, it, in its turn, will be taken by but one individual.  One man must always be the first, and let him be he who can!

Without anxiety regarding this circumstance, let your attention rest for an instant on the consideration to which we have previously led you—­in how enviable a position Germany and the world would be if the former had known how to utilize the good fortune of her position and to recognize her advantage.  Let your eyes rest upon what they both are now, and let your minds be penetrated by the pain and indignation which, in this reflection, must lay hold upon every noble soul.  Then examine yourselves and see that it is you who can release the age from the errors of ancient times, and that, if only you will permit it, your own eyes can be cleared of the mist that covers them; learn, too, that it has been vouchsafed to you, as to no generation before you, to undo what has been done and to efface the dishonorable interval from the annals of the German nation.