interpretation, demanded at once inquiry into its historical conditions and
a consideration of the means by which the glaring contradiction between
the condition of the nation at the time and the ideals of reason could be
diminished. The _Addresses to the German Nation_ outlined a plan for a
moral reformation of the world, to start with the education of the German
people;[1] while the _Characteristics of the Present Age_, which had
preceded the _Addresses_, defined the place of the age in the general
development of humanity. The scheme of historical periods given in
the _Characteristics_ and similarly in the _Theory of the State_
(innocence--sin--supremacy of reason, with intermediate stages between each
two) is interesting as a forerunner of Hegel's undertaking.

[Footnote 1: "Among all nations you are the one in whom the germ of human
perfection is most decidedly present." The spiritual regeneration of
mankind must proceed from the German people, for they are the one original
or primitive people of the new age, the only one which has preserved its
living language--French is a dead tongue--and has raised itself to true
creative poetry and free science. The ground of distinction between
Germanism and the foreign spirit lies in the question, whether we believe
in an original element in man, in the freedom, infinite perfectibility, and
eternal progress of our race, or put no faith in all these.]

History is produced through the interaction of the two principles, faith
and understanding, which are related to each other as law and freedom, and
strives toward a condition in which these two shall be so reconciled that
faith shall have entirely passed over into the form of understanding, shall
have been transformed into insight, and understanding shall have taken up
the content of faith into itself. History begins with the coming together
of two original and primitive races, one of order or faith, and one of
freedom or understanding, neither of which would attain to an historical
development apart from the other. From the legal race the free race learns
respect for the law, as in turn it arouses in the former the impulse toward
freedom. The course of history divides into five periods. In the state
of "innocence" or of rational instinct that which is rational is done
unconsciously, out of natural impulse; in the state of "commencing sin" the
instinct for the good changes into an external compulsory authority,
the law of reason a