corporated into the Constitution, in
order to make it plain that it must remain inviolate even at the hands
of the law-giver himself, that even he must not for a moment overlook
or disregard it. And so it serves as pledge of the continual peaceable
development of social life down to the remotest generations.

Does a question present itself at this point, Gentlemen? Am I setting
up a new and unheard-of theory on this head?

Am I, possibly, misconstruing the wording of the Constitution in order
to extricate myself from an embarrassing criminal process?

On the contrary, nothing is easier than to prove to you from the
evidences of history that this provision of the Constitution has never
been taken in any other sense; that for long centuries before the days
of the Constitution this theory has been current among us in usage
and practice; that it is by ancient tradition a characteristic feature
of the culture of all Germanic peoples.

In the days of Socrates, it was still possible to be indicted for
having taught new gods (Greek: katnos theous), and Socrates drank
the hemlock under such an indictment.

In antiquity all this was natural enough. The genius of antiquity was
so utterly identified with the conditions of its political life, and
religion was so integral an element in the foundations of the ancient
State, that the ancient mind was quite incapable of divesting itself
of these convictions, and so getting out of its integument. The spirit
of antiquity must stand or fall with its particular political
conventions, and, in the event, it fell with them.

Such being the spirit of those times, it follows that any scientific
doctrine which carried a denial of any element of the foundations of
the State was in effect an attack upon the nation's life and must
necessarily be dealt with as such.

All this changes when the ancient world passes away and the Germanic
peoples come upon the scene. These latter are peoples gifted with a
capacity to change their integument. By virtue of that faculty for
development that belongs to the guiding principle of their life, viz.:
the principle of the subjective spirit,--by virtue of this, these
latter are possessed of a flexibility which enables them to live
through the most widely varied metamorphoses. These peoples have
passed through many and extreme transformations, and, instead of
meeting their death and dissolution in the process, they have by force
of it ever emerged on a higher