In the maintenance of the traditional
organization, of the laws, and of civic welfare, there is absolutely
no genuine life and no primitive decision. Circumstances and
situations, legislators who have perhaps long been dead, have created
those things; succeeding ages go trustingly forward in the road they
have entered, and thus, as a matter of fact, they do not live a public
life of their own, but merely repeat a former. In such periods there
is no need of a real government. If, however, this uniform progress
is imperiled, and the problem arises of deciding with reference to
new cases, then a life is required which has its roots in itself. What
spirit is it, now, which in such cases may take its place at the helm,
which is able to decide with individual certainty and without uneasy
wavering, and which has an indubitable right authoritatively to lay
demands upon every one who may be concerned, whether he will or not,
and to compel the recalcitrant to imperil everything, even to his
life? Not the spirit of calm civilian love for the constitution and
the laws, but the burning flame of the higher patriotism which regards
the nation as the veil of the eternal, for which the noble joyfully
sacrifices himself, and for which the ignoble, who exists only for
the sake of the noble, should also sacrifice himself! It is not that
civilian love for the constitution, for this is absolutely incapable
of such action if it is founded on reason only.
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