An art which oversteps the laws and boundaries which I have indicated is no longer art; it is factory work, it is trade; and that no art dare become. Through the much-misused word "freedom" and under her flag one often falls into indefiniteness, boundlessness, conceit. However, he who cuts loose from the law of beauty and from the feeling for æsthetics and harmony which, whether he can express it or not, every man feels in his heart; he who thinks the chief thing is to turn his thoughts in a certain direction toward a definite solution of more technical problems, sins against the very sources of his art. Furthermore, art must help to educate the people; it must also give the lower classes, after their cramping exertions, the opportunity to right themselves again through ideals. To us, the German people, great ideals are a lasting possession, while with other peoples they have been more or less lost. It is now the German people whose special province it is to protect these great ideas, to foster them, to set them forth; and to these ideas belongs the duty of giving to those classes who tire themselves out through labor the opportunity to raise themselves through beautiful things and to work themselves out of and above their ordinary circles of thought. If, however, art, as often happens nowadays, does nothing more than to make misery even more hideous than it already is, then it sins against the German people. The fostering of the ideal is the greatest work of culture; and if we wish to be and to remain a pattern in this for other peoples, then we must all work together; and if culture is to accomplish its full task, then it must penetrate through to the very lowest strata of the people. That it can only do if art lends a hand, if it raises up instead of drawing down into the gutter. As ruler, I often feel very bitter that art, through her masters, should not be energetic enough to make a stand against such tendencies. I do not doubt for a moment but that many an earnest but misguided character, perhaps filled with the best intentions, is to be found among the devotees of this tendency. The real artist needs no advertising, no press, no connections. I do not believe that your great examples in the realm of science, either in ancient Greece or in Italy or in the time of the Renaissance, used any such methods as are now often practised through the press to bring their ideas especially into the foreground. They worked as God directed them; for the rest they allowed the world to criticise. And that is the way an honorable, sincere artist must act. Art which stoops to advertising is no longer art, were it praised to the skies. Every one, be he never so simple, has a feeling for that which is beautiful or ugly, and it is to foster this feeling further among the people that I have need of all of you; and that you should have accomplished such a piece of work in the Siegesallee, I, therefore, thank you particularly.