To you has been vouchsafed the greater destiny of establishing
generally the empire of the spirit and of reason, and of wholly
annihilating rude physical power as that which dominates the world. If
you shall do this, then are you worthy of descent from us.
In these voices also mingle the spirits of your later ancestors, of
those who fell in the holy struggle for freedom of religion and of
faith. Save our honor, likewise, they cry to you. It was not wholly
clear to us for what we fought. Besides the legitimate resolve not to
allow ourselves to be dominated in matters of conscience by a foreign
power, we were also impelled by a higher spirit who never revealed
himself entirely unto us. To you this spirit is revealed, if you have
the power to look into the spirit world, and he gazes upon you
with clear and lofty eyes. The motley and confused intermingling of
sensuous and of spiritual impulses is wholly to be deposed from
its world-dominion; and spirit alone, absolute, and stripped of all
sensuous impulses, is to take the helm of human affairs. Our blood was
shed that this spirit might have freedom to develop and to grow to an
independent existence. Upon you it depends to give to this sacrifice
its signification and its justification by installing this spirit into
the world-dominion destined for him. If this is not the final goal
toward which all the development of our nation has thus far aimed,
our struggles, too, become a passing, empty farce, and the freedom of
spirit and of conscience that we won is an empty word, if henceforth
there is to be no longer any spirit or any conscience whatsoever.
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