[Footnote A:  Treitschke, “Deutsche Geschichte,” i., p. 95.]

There are numerous other tasks to be fulfilled if we are to discharge our highest duty.  They form the necessary platform from which we can mount to the highest goal.  These duties lie in the domains of science and politics, and also in that borderland where science and politics touch, and where the latter is often directly conditioned by the results of scientific inquiry.

First and foremost it is German science which must regain its superiority in unwearying and brilliant research in order to vindicate our birthright.  On the one hand, we must extend the theory of the perceptive faculty; on the other, we must increase man’s dominion over Nature by exploring her hidden secrets, and thus make human work more useful and remunerative.  We must endeavour to find scientific solutions of the great problems which deeply concern mankind.  We need not restrict ourselves to the sphere of pure theory, but must try to benefit civilization by the practical results of research, and thus create conditions of life in which a purer conception of the ideal life can find its expression.

It is, broadly speaking, religious and social controversies which exercise the most permanent influence on human existence, and condition not only our future development, but the higher life generally.  These problems have occupied the minds of no people more deeply and permanently than our own.  Yet the revolutionary spirit, in spite of the empty ravings of social democratic agitators, finds no place in Germany.  The German nature tends towards a systematic healthy development, which works slowly in opposition to the different movements.  The Germans thus seem thoroughly qualified to settle in their own country the great controversies which are rending other nations, and to direct them into the paths of a natural progress in conformity with the laws of evolution.

We have already started on the task in the social sphere, and shall no doubt continue it, so far as it is compatible with the advantages of the community and the working class itself.  We must not spare any efforts to find other means than those already adopted to inspire the working class with healthy and patriotic ambitions.

It is to be hoped, in any case, that if ever a great and common duty, requiring the concentration of the whole national strength, is imposed upon us, that the labour classes will not withhold their co-operation, and that, in face of a common danger, our nation will recover that unity which is lamentably deficient to-day.