"Man, be he born in the most miserable and abject condition, is created
to become an image of God. Rely on the promised Christian freedom.
Honour and trust only the free man. Detest the traitors, the slaves in
soul, the false teachers, who will not have this. Hate the dastardly
poets of half-measures, the preachers of cowardice, the hirelings who
hold thee back from every bold enterprise. Detest and murder all those
who lift themselves so high in their villanous and despotic fancies
that they forget the godlike in thee, and hold and drive thee, the mad
multitude, in their high-wise hands, as a complex wheel.
"Free conscience! free speech! Man shall solace himself at his own free
pleasure in the divine light, of which the fountain is in him. He shall
strive after the highest discoveries, and shall be able, unburdened by
those of others, to prove and build up his own convictions. But man
also shall verify these opinions; he shall live and act; he shall
exercise his divine creative power--his will, and shall make it
availing. It is for this that we have received the whole might of
will--not that we may suffer others to decide what they please
concerning us, as over a piece of a field, but that in every condition
of life we may determine for ourselves; and therein all virtue
demonstrates itself--that we, in every thing which concerns the people,
shall take a lively interest, and so act upon our own resolves, each as
we will, and not as another compels.
"_Finally, make free your wills!_
"This is the sole, purely human, this the necessary foundation for
every human society: this must be won for the German Empire! Only when
this sole and righteous condition is achieved, then only can be the
discussion on further undertakings.
"My German people! win self-dependence, and that lofty mind, which
already some of thy heroes have borne in them. This is the right,
hallowed spirit of life, that thou dost that which the sacred
Scriptures of Christendom and of antiquity teach--that which thy poets
sing; and admirest or regardest them not merely as empty fables.
Brother! proudly and courageously shalt thou win by high endeavour,
that highest and holiest object which thy soul can conceive--the
condition of a purified, and beatified manhood--
A Christ canst thou become.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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