For the people is concerned only with its self-assertion; it demands "patriotic self-sacrifice" from everybody. To it, accordingly, every one _in himself_ is indifferent, a nothing, and it cannot do, not even suffer, what the individual and he alone must do,--to wit, _turn him to account_. Every people, every State, is unjust toward the _egoist_. As long as there still exists even one institution which the individual may not dissolve, the ownness and self-appurtenance of Me is still very remote. How can I, _e. g._, be free when I must bind myself by oath to a constitution, a charter, a law, "vow body and soul" to my people? How can I be my own when my faculties may develop only so far as they "do not disturb the harmony of society" (Weitling)? The fall of peoples and mankind will invite _me_ to my rise. Listen, even as I am writing this, the bells begin to sound, that they may jingle in for to-morrow the festival of the thousand years existence of our dear Germany. Sound, sound its knell! You do sound solemn enough, as if your tongue was moved by the presentiment that it is giving convoy to a corpse. The German people and German peoples have behind them a history of a thousand years: what a long life! O, go to rest, never to rise again,--that all may become free whom you so long have held in fetters.--The _people_ is dead.--Up with _me_! O thou my much-tormented German people--what was thy torment? It was the torment of a thought that cannot create itself a body, the torment of a walking spirit that dissolves into nothing at every cock-crow and yet pines for deliverance and fulfilment. In me too thou hast lived long, thou dear--thought, thou dear--spook. Already I almost fancied I had found the word of thy deliverance, discovered flesh and bones for the wandering spirit; then I hear them sound, the bells that usher thee into eternal rest; then the last hope fades out, then the notes of the last love die away, then I depart from the desolate house of those who now are dead and enter at the door of the--living one: For only he who is alive is in the right. Farewell, thou dream of so many millions; farewell, thou who hast tyrannized over thy children for a thousand years! To-morrow they carry thee to the grave; soon thy sisters, the peoples, will follow thee. But, when they have all followed, then----mankind is buried, and I am my own, I am the laughing heir! * * * * *