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nd makes it a criminal offense,--_crimen novum atque inauditum_.[54] I might, of course, content myself with the answer that the substance of an address, and therefore its scientific character, is in no way affected by the place in which it happens to have been delivered, whether it is in the Academy of Science, before the cream of the learned world, or in a hall in the suburbs before an audience of machinists. But I owe you, Gentlemen, a somewhat fuller answer. To begin with, let me express my amazement at the fact that here in Berlin, in the city where Fichte delivered his immortal popular lectures on philosophy, his speeches on the fundamental features of the modern epoch and his speeches on the German nation before the general public, that in this place and day it should occur to any one to fancy that the place in which an address is delivered has anything whatever to do with its scientific character. The great destiny of our age is precisely this--which the dark ages had been unable to conceive, much less to achieve--the dissemination of scientific knowledge among the body of the people. The difficulties of this task may be serious enough, and we may magnify them as we like,--still, our endeavors are ready to wrestle with them and our nightly vigils will be given to overcoming them. In the general decay which, as all those who know the profounder realities of history appreciate, has overtaken European history in all its bearings, there are but two things that have retained their vigor and their propagating force in the midst of all that shriveling blight of self-seeking that pervades European life. These two things are science and the people, science and the workingman. And the union of these two is alone capable of invigorating European culture with a new life. The union of these two polar opposites of modern society, science and the workingman,--when these two join forces they will crush all obstacles to cultural advance with an iron hand, and it is to this union that I have resolved to devote my life so long as there is breath in my body. But, Gentlemen, is this view something new and entirely unheard-of in the realm of science? Let us see what Fichte himself, in his Addresses to the German People, has to say to the cultured classes, to whom he addresses these words: "It is particularly to the cultured classes of Germany that I wish to direct my remarks in the present address, for it is to these c
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