This reflection is, moreover, demanded from each one of you who can still consider for himself something lying obviously before his eyes.  You have time for this; events will not take you unawares; the records of the negotiations conducted with you will remain before your eyes.  Lay them not from your hands until you are in unity with your selves.  Neither let, oh, let not yourselves be made supine by reliance upon others or upon anything whatsoever that lies outside yourselves, nor yet through the unintelligent belief of our time that the epochs of history are made by the agency of some unknown power without any aid from man.  These addresses have never wearied in impressing upon you that absolutely nothing can help you but yourselves, and they find it necessary to repeat this to the last moment.  Rain and dew, fruitful or unfruitful years, may indeed be made by a power which is unknown to us and is not under our control; but only men themselves—­and absolutely no power outside them—­give to each epoch its particular stamp.  Only when they are all equally blind and ignorant do they fall the victims of this hidden power, though it is within their own control not to be blind and ignorant.  It is true that to whatever degree, greater or less, things may go ill with us, in part depends upon that unknown power; but far more is it dependent upon the intelligence and the good will of those to whom we are subjected.  Whether, on the other hand, it will ever again be well with us depends wholly upon ourselves; and surely nevermore will any welfare whatsoever come to us unless we ourselves acquire it for ourselves—­especially unless each individual among us toils and labors in his own way as though he were alone and as though the salvation of future generations depended solely upon him.

This is what you have to do; and these addresses adjure you to do this without delay.

They adjure you, young men!  I, who have long since ceased to belong to you, maintain—­and I have also expressed my conviction in these addresses—­that you are yet more capable of every thought transcending the commonplace, and are more easily aroused to all that is good and great, because your time of life still lies closer to the years of childish innocence and of nature.  Very differently does the majority of the older generation regard this fundamental trait in you.  It accuses you of arrogance, of a rash, presumptuous judgment which soars beyond your strength, of obstinacy, and of desire of innovation; yet it merely smiles good-naturedly at these, your errors.  All this, it thinks, is based simply on your lack of knowledge of the world, that is, of universal human corruption, since it has eyes for nothing else on earth.  You are now supposed to have courage only because you hope to find help-mates like-minded with yourselves and because you do not know the grim and stubborn resistance which will be opposed to your projects of improvement.  When the youthful fire