"Thou, my German People, exalt thyself, to a higher moral worth of manhood; of the free spirit of man, and his creative strength! My German People! thou hast no realler nor nobler possession; it is thy highest good. Honour, guard this faith--this thy love to God. Let thy sanctuary no more be trodden under foot.
"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.
"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--