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Internet Modern History Sourcebook:
Johann Gottlieb Fichte:
To the German Nation, 1806
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (17621814) was a German philosopher,
a reformer and a supporter of the French Revolution and its ideals.
But when France, under Napoleon, took control of Germany along
with much of the rest of Europe, he rethought his position and
made series of Addresses to the German Nation (1806), in
Frenchoccupied Berlin.
The first, original, and truly natural boundaries of states are
beyond doubt their internal boundaries. Those who speak the same
language are joined to each other by a multitude of invisible
bonds by nature herself, long before any human art begins; they
understand each other and have the power of continuing to make
themselves understood more and more clearly; they belong together
and are by nature one and an inseparable whole. Such a whole,
if it wishes to absorb and mingle with itself any other people
of different descent and language, cannot do so without itself
becoming confused, in the beginning at any rate, and violently
disturbing the even progress of its culture. From this internal
boundary, which is drawn by the spiritual nature of man himself,
the marking of the external boundary by dwelling place results
as a consequence; and in the natural view of things it is not
because men dwell between certain mountains and rivers that they
are a people, but, on the contrary, men dwell together-and, if
their luck has so arranged it, are protected by rivers and mountains-because
they were a people already by a law of nature which is much higher.
Thus was the German nation placed-sufficiently united within itself
by a common language and a common way of thinking, and sharply
enough severed from the other peoples-in the middle of Europe,
as a wall to divide races not akin ....
That things should remain thus did not suit the selfishness of
foreign countries, whose calculations did not look more than one
moment ahead. They found German bravery useful in waging their
wars and German hands useful to snatch the booty from their rivals.
A means had to be found to attain this end, and foreign cunning
won an easy victory over German ingenuousness and lack of suspicion.
It was foreign countries which first made use of the division
of mind produced by religious disputes in Germany-Germany, which
presented on a small scale the features of Christian Europe as
a whole-foreign countries, I say, made use of these disputes to
break up the close inner unity of Germany into separate and disconnected
parts....
. . . They knew how to present each of these separate states that
had thus arisen in the lap of the one nation-which had no enemy
except those foreign countries themselves, and no concern except
the common one of setting itself with united strength against
their seductive craft and cunning-foreign countries, I say, knew
how to present each of these states to the others as a natural
enemy, against which each state must be perpetually on its guard.
On the other hand, they knew how to make themselves appear to
the German states as natural allies against the danger threatening
them from their own countrymen-as allies with whom alone they
would themselves stand or fall, and whose enterprises they must
in turn support with all their might. It was only because of this
artificial bond that all the disputes which might arise about
any matter whatever in the Old World or the New became disputes
of the German races in their relation to each other. Every war,
no matter what its cause, had to be fought out on German soil
and with German blood; every disturbance of the balance had to
be adjusted in that nation to which the whole fountainhead of
such relationships was unknown; and the German states, whose separate
existence was in itself contrary to all nature and reason, were
compelled, in order that they might count for something, to act
as makeweightsl to the chief forces in the scale of the European
equilibrium, whose movement they followed blindly and without
any will of their own. Just as in many states abroad the citizens
are designated as belonging to this or that foreign party, or
voting for this or that foreign alliance, but no name is found
for those who belong to the party of their own country, so it
was with the Germans; for long enough they belonged only to some
foreign party or other, and one seldom came across a man who supported
the party of the Germans and was of the opinion that this country
ought to make an alliance with itself.
Now, at last, let us be bold enough to look at the deceptive vision
of a universal monarchy, which people are beginning to hold up
for public veneration in place of that equilibrium which for some
time has been growing more and more preposterous, and let us perceive
how hateful and contrary to reason that vision is. Spiritual nature
was able to present the essence of humanity in extremely diverse
gradations in individuals and in individuality as a whole, in
peoples. Only when each people, left to itself, develops and forms
itself in accordance with its own peculiar quality, and only when
in every people each individual develops himself in accordance
with that common quality, as well as in accordance with his own
peculiar quality-then, and then only, does the manifestation of
divinity appear in its true mirror as it ought to be; and only
a man who either entirely lacks the notion of the rule of law
and divine order, or else is an obdurate enemy thereto, could
take upon himself to want to interfere with that law, which is
the highest law in the spiritual world! Only in the invisible
qualities of nations, which are hidden from their own eyes-qualities
as the means whereby these nations remain in touch with the source
of original life-only therein is to be found the guarantee of
their present and future worth, virtue, and merit. If these qualities
are dulled by admixture and worn away by friction, the flatness
that results will bring about a separation from spiritual nature,
and this in its turn will cause all men to~be fused together in
their uniform and collective destruction.
Source:
Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Thirteenth Address, Addresses to
the German Nation, ed. George A. Kelly (New York: Harper Torch
Books, 1968), pp. 19091,19394,19798.
This text is part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook.
The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted
texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World
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(c)Paul Halsall Aug 1997
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