[p. 517]
|517| burgher sense, which cares only for an individual thing without independence and without a view to the whole, began to become a power, this isolation of minds would have required a more universal, more positive bond, and when Germany, through the progress of culture and industry, was now thrust to the parting of the ways, either to resolve to obey a universal or to tear the connection completely asunder, the original German character, of persisting in the free will of the individual and resisting subjection to a universal, carried the victory and determined Germany’s fate in accordance with its ancient nature.
In the course of time great masses of states and the dominion of trade and of wealth from industry had formed; the unruliness of the German character could not directly pursue the formation of independent states, the ancient free strength of the nobility could not resist the masses that had arisen, and above all the burgher spirit, gaining standing and political significance, needed a kind of inner and outer legitimation. The German character threw itself upon the innermost of man, religion and conscience, fixed isolation from there, and the separation of the external as states appeared only as a consequence of this.
The original, never tamed character of the German nation determined the iron necessity of its fate. Within the sphere given by this fate, politics, religion, need, virtue, force, reason, cunning and all the powers which move the human race drive their mighty, seemingly disorderly play on the broad battlefield that is permitted them. Each conducts itself as an absolutely free and independent power, unconscious that they are all instruments in the hand of higher powers, of the primordial fate and of all-conquering time, which laugh at that freedom and independence. Even need, this mighty being, has not subdued the German
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