the impeding power against all the improvements which kindly nature offered us from her ever—­youthful womb until you were gathered to the dust which you were before, and until the succeeding generations, which were at war with you, had become like unto you and had adopted your attitude.  Now, also, you need only conduct yourselves as you have previously acted in case of all propositions for amelioration; you need only again prefer to the general weal your empty honor in order that there may be nothing between heaven and earth that you have not already fathomed; then, through this last battle, you are relieved from all further battle; no improvement will accrue, but deterioration will follow in the footsteps of deterioration, and thus there will be much satisfaction in reserve for you.

No one will suppose that I despise and depreciate old age as old age.  If only the source of primitive life and of its continuance is absorbed into life through freedom, then clarity—­and strength with it—­increases so long as life endures.  Such a life is easier to live; the dross of earthly origin falls away more and ever more; it is ennobled to the life eternal and strives toward it.  The experience of such an old age is irreconcilable with evil, and it only makes the means clearer and the skill more adroit victoriously to battle against wickedness.  Deterioration through increasing age is simply the fault of our time, and it necessarily results in every place where society is much corrupted.  It is not nature which corrupts us—­she produces us in innocence; it is society.  He who has once surrendered to the influence of society must naturally become ever worse and worse the longer he is exposed to this influence.  It would be worth the trouble to investigate the history of other extremely corrupt generations in this regard, and to see whether—­for example, under the rule of the Roman emperors—­what was once bad did not continually become worse with increasing age.

First of all, therefore, these addresses adjure you, old men and experienced—­you who form the exception!  Confirm, strengthen, counsel in this matter the younger generation, which reverently looks up to you.  And the rest of you also, who are average souls, they adjure!  If you are not to help, at least do not interfere, this time; do not again—­as always hitherto—­put yourselves in the way with your wisdom and with your thousand hesitations.  This thing, like every rational thing in the world, is not complicated, but simple; and it also belongs among the thousand matters which you know not.  If your wisdom could save, it would surely have saved us before; for it is you who have counseled us thus far.  Now, like everything else, all this is forgiven you, and you should no longer be reproached with it.  Only learn at last once to know yourselves, and be silent.