We mentioned at the end of our previous address that there are in circulation among us still more false ideas and delusive theories concerning the affairs of peoples, and that these prevent the Germans from coming to a definite view of their present situation that would be appropriate to their particular character. These phantoms are at this very time being offered around for public veneration with even greater zeal and, since so much else has begun to totter and become uncertain, they might be considered by some solely as a way of filling the vacuum that has arisen; therefore, it seems pertinent to the matter in hand to submit these to a more serious examination than their importance would otherwise merit.

To begin with, and above all else, the first, original and truly natural frontiers of states are undoubtedly their inner frontiers. Those who speak the same language are already, before all human art, joined together by mere nature with a multitude of invisible ties; they understand one another and are able to communicate ever more clearly; they belong together and are naturally one, an indivisible whole. No other nation of a different descent and language can desire to absorb and assimilate such a people without, at least temporarily, becoming confused and profoundly disturbing the steady progress of its own culture. The external limits of territories only follow as a consequence of this inner frontier, drawn by man's spiritual nature itself.

The following addresses were delivered as a series of lectures in Berlin during the winter of 1807–8 and are a continuation of my Characteristics of the Present Age, which I presented during the winter of 1804–5 in the same location (and which were printed by this publisher in 1806). What had to be said to the public in and through them is expressed clearly enough in the work itself, and it therefore had no need of a foreword. Since, however, in the meantime a number of blank pages have resulted by the manner in which these addresses were put together, I have filled this space with material that has in part already been passed by the censor and published elsewhere. Of this material I was reminded by the circumstances that led to these blank pages arising in the first place, for it would seem to have general application in this instance also. I refer the reader in particular to the conclusion of the Twelfth Address, which touches on this same subject.

From a Treatise on Machiavelli as writer, with extracts from his works

From the conclusion of that treatise

We can think of two species of men against whom we should like to safeguard ourselves if we could. First, those who assume, just because they are unable in their thoughts to get beyond what is printed in the latest newspaper, that no one else can either; that accordingly everything which is said or written has some relation to this newspaper and should serve as a commentary thereon.

In the last address we examined what the principal differences would be between a people that continued to develop in its original language and one that adopted a foreign language. We said on that occasion: as far as foreigners are concerned, we wished to leave it to each observer's judgement to decide whether those phenomena really occurred which, according to our assertions, were bound to occur; but as far as the Germans are concerned, we pledged to demonstrate that they really revealed themselves as, according to our assertions, the people with an original language was bound to reveal itself. Today we shall make good our promise and set forth the proof for our claims by examining, first of all, the last great and, in a certain sense, completed world deed [Welt-That] of the German people, the Reformation of the Church.

Christianity, which originated in Asia and by its corruption became more Asiatic than ever, preaching dumb submission and blind faith, was something strange and exotic even to the Romans. They never truly penetrated and appropriated it, and divided its essence into two incongruous halves; whereupon the attachment of the foreign part was accomplished with the aid of the melancholy superstition they had inherited from their ancestors. Among the immigrated Teutons this religion acquired adherents who had no prior intellectual training [Verstandesbildung] to hinder its acceptance, but also no hereditary superstition favourable to it.

The last four addresses answered the question: what is the German in opposition to other peoples of Teutonic descent? This line of argument in support of our inquiry as a whole will be completed if we further add the examination of the question: what is a people? This latter question is identical with, and at the same time helps to answer, another question, often raised and resolved in very different ways: what is love of fatherland? Or, as one might more accurately express oneself: what is the love of the individual for his nation?

If we have thus far proceeded aright in the course of our inquiry, then it must be evident that only the German – the original man whose spirit has not become dead in some arbitrary organisation – truly has a people and is entitled to reckon on one; that only he is capable of real and rational love for his nation.

The following observation, which at first seems to have no connection with the foregoing, will set us on the way to solving our appointed task.

Religion, as we had cause to remark already in our third address, is quite able to transport us beyond all time, and beyond the present, sensuous life, without the least injury to the justness [Rechtlichkeit], morality and sanctity of the life seized by this faith.

We have said that the proposed means of cultivating a new race of men must first be applied by Germans to Germans, and that it is a task that quite properly and immediately pertains to our nation. This proposition, too, is in need of proof and here also we shall begin, just as we have done thus far, with that which is highest and most general. We shall demonstrate what the German in and of himself, independently of the fate that has now befallen him, is and has always been in his essential character, ever since he came into existence. And we shall show that his aptitude for and receptivity to a culture such as we envisage lies already in this essential character and separates him from every other European nation.

The Germans are first and foremost one of the Teutonic tribes. As to the latter it will suffice here to define them as those whose task it was to unite the social order established in ancient Europe with the true religion preserved in ancient Asia, and thus to develop out of themselves a new age in opposition to the antiquity that had perished. Furthermore, it is enough to describe the Germans as such in contrast only with the other Teutonic peoples. While some modern European nations, such as those of Slavic descent, seem not to have developed so clearly from the rest of Europe that a definite portrait of them would be possible, others of the same Teutonic stock, to whom the ground of distinction that I shall presently adduce does not apply, like the Scandinavians, are here taken undoubtedly for Germans and included in all the general conclusions of our meditations.

The addresses which I hereby conclude have directed their loud voice primarily at you, but they had in view the entire German nation; and in aim they have assembled about them, in the room in which you visibly breathe, all who might be capable of understanding the same as far as the German tongue extends. If I have succeeded in lighting a spark in any breast beating here before me now, a spark that will glimmer on and take life, then it is not my intention that they remain solitary and alone. Rather, I should like to gather to them, from across the whole of our common soil, men of similar sentiments and resolutions, and unite them, so that throughout the length and breadth of the fatherland, as far as its most distant frontiers, a single flowing and continuous flame of patriotic thought spreads out from this centre and ignites. Not for the amusement of idle eyes and ears have these addresses appealed to this age: I wish at last to know, and everyone of like mind shall know it with me, whether there are others besides us who share our way of thinking. Every German who still believes he is part of a nation, who thinks highly and nobly of it, who hopes in it, who dares, endures and suffers for it, shall at last be released from the uncertainty of his belief; he shall see clearly whether he is right or only a fool and fanatic; henceforth he should either continue his path with sure and joyful consciousness or else with a hearty determination renounce a fatherland here below and in the heavenly one find his only consolation.

That education which we put before the Germans as their future national education has now been amply described. When once the race formed by this education stands before us, this race driven solely by its taste for the right and good and by nothing else; this race endowed with an understanding that is adequate for its standpoint and recognises the right unerringly on every occasion; this race equipped with every mental and physical power to realise its will – then from the very existence of that race all that we can long for, even in our boldest wishes, will come true and grow out of it naturally. Such an age has so little need of our prescriptions that we would rather have to learn from it.

Since this race is not yet at hand, but must first be raised to maturity; and since, even if our expectations should be surpassed, we shall still have need of a considerable interval of time in order to cross over into that age, there arises the more immediate question: how shall we make it through this interval? Since we can do nothing better, how shall we maintain ourselves, at least as the soil on which the improvement can take place and as the point from which it proceeds? When once the race formed in this way steps forth from its isolation and comes among us, how are we to prevent it from finding in us a reality that has not the slightest kinship with the order of things it has conceived as right; a reality in which no one understands it or harbours the least desire and need for such an order of things, but regards the already existing order of things as wholly natural and the only possible one?

My proposed means of preserving the German nation, to the clear perception of which these addresses might lead you, and along with you the entire nation, proceeds from the complexion of the age, as well as from the national characteristics of the Germans, and this means must in turn affect the age and the formation of these national characteristics. Consequently, this means will not be rendered perfectly clear and intelligible until it has been compared together with these and these with it, and both presented in complete interpenetration. This business requires a little time, and thus perfect clarity can be expected only at the conclusion of our addresses. Since we must begin with one of these individual elements, however, it will be most expedient to consider first of all that means itself, in isolation from its surroundings in time and space, by itself in its inner nature, and so today's address and the one immediately following shall be devoted to this task.

The means indicated was an entirely new system of German national education, the like of which has never before existed in any other nation. In the foregoing address I described the distinction between this new education and the old thus: until now education at most only exhorted its pupils to good order and morality, but these exhortations bore no fruit in real life, which is constituted on the basis of principles that are quite different and wholly inaccessible to this education.

At noon on Sunday, 13 December 1807, Johann Gottlieb Fichte stood before an expectant audience in the amphitheatre of the Berlin Academy of Sciences and began the first of a series of fourteen weekly lectures known as the Addresses to the German Nation. A year before, Prussia, the last German state left standing against Napoleon, had been brought to its knees, its armies routed at the Battle of Jena. As the French advanced unopposed towards Berlin, Fichte fled the city, following the king and his government east to Königsberg. Now, after a Carthaginian peace had stripped Prussia of her rank as a major European power and reduced her to a satellite of the Grand Empire, Fichte returned to the occupied capital, traumatised, yet convinced it was his duty to mobilise a defeated people and urge their spiritual renewal. It was a course of action not without danger. Recalling the fate of Johann Palm, a Nuremberg book-dealer executed by the French for printing a seditious pamphlet, Fichte wrote: ‘I know very well what I risk; I know that a bullet may kill me, like Palm; but it is not this that I fear, and for my cause I would gladly die.’ Over the sound of the drums of French troops marching in the streets outside, he began to speak …

In our last address we furnished and completed several proofs that we had already promised in the first. The only issue for now, we said, and let this be our first task, is to save and perpetuate the existence of the German as such; all other differences vanished before this higher vantage point and the special obligations under which anyone might consider himself to be would not thereby be prejudiced. It is clear, if only we call to mind the distinction we made between state and nation, that even in earlier times the interests [Angelegenheiten] of both could never come into conflict. Besides, higher patriotic love for the whole people of the German nation had to assume the supreme leadership of each particular German state, just as it ought to have done. None of these states could lose sight of this higher interest without forfeiting all that was noble and excellent, thereby hastening its own demise: the more someone was seized and animated by that higher interest, therefore, the better citizen he was in service of the particular German state in which his immediate sphere of activity lay. German states could well clash with other German states over certain traditional franchises. Whoever wished the established situation to continue – and doubtless every reasonable man was bound to want this for the sake of its further consequences – had to hope that the just cause would prevail, no matter who its champion might be.

The specific nature of the proposed new education, insofar as it was described in the previous address, consisted in this, that it was the deliberate and sure art of cultivating the pupil to pure morality. To pure morality, I said. This morality is something primary, independent, self-sufficient, and self-existent; and not at all, like the lawfulness often intended before now, linked to and grafted on to a non-moral drive whose satisfaction it serves. It is the deliberate and sure art of this moral education, I said. It does not wander aimlessly and haphazardly, but proceeds according to a fixed rule well known to it and is certain of its success. Its pupil goes forth at the proper time as a fixed and immutable product of its art, who could not go in any other way save that determined by it, who requires no assistance, but continues of himself and according to his own law.

True, this education also cultivates the mind of the pupil and indeed its work begins with this mental culture. Yet this development of the mind is not its primary and sovereign purpose, but only the means by which it imparts moral culture to the pupil. In the meantime, this mental culture, though acquired but incidentally, remains an ineradicable possession of the pupil's life and the eternally blazing beacon of his moral love.