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315

The opening up of this opportunity for knowledge has the more general aspect that public opinion thereby first arrives at true thoughts and at insight into the condition and concept of the state and its affairs, and hence first attains a capacity to judge more rationally about these matters; it also comes to know and esteem the business, talents, virtues, and skills of the officers and officials of the state. Just as these talents thereby acquire, through such publicity, a powerful opportunity for development and a stage on which to win high honor, so publicity is likewise the remedy against the self-conceit of individuals and of the multitude, and a means of educating them — indeed one of the greatest such means.

DE

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  1. Eduard Gans (Additions) Avatar
    Eduard Gans (Additions)

    The publicity of the assemblies of the estates is a great spectacle, one that educates the citizens above all, and it is from this that the people learns best to know the true character of its interests. There generally prevails the notion that everyone already knows what is good for the state, and that in the assembly of the estates this is merely given voice, but in fact just the opposite takes place: it is only here that virtues, talents, and skills develop that are to serve as models. To be sure, such assemblies are burdensome for the ministers, who must themselves be equipped with wit and eloquence in order to meet the attacks directed against them here; but nevertheless publicity is the greatest means of education for the interests of the state in general. In a people among whom this takes place, a quite different vitality shows itself in relation to the state than where the assembly of the estates is lacking or is not public. Only through this becoming known of each of its steps do the chambers stand in connection with the wider realm of public opinion, and it becomes apparent that what someone imagines at home with his wife or his friends is one thing, and what happens in a large assembly, where one cleverness devours another, is quite another.

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