that Providence who bringeth good out of evil, this
fearful revolution has partly become, and will yet further become, the
occasion of the moral and social regeneration of Europe."[52]

The patriot saw his country degraded; but the Christian wept for his
absent faith. Rationalism was strongest when national humiliation was
deepest. These formed a fitting twinship. It is a scathing comment on
the influence of skepticism upon a people that, in general, the highest
feeling of nationality is coexistent with the devoutest piety. It is the
very nature of infidelity to deaden the emotions of patriotism, and that
country can hardly expect to prove successful if it engage in war while
its citizens are imbued with religious doubt. If lands are conquered, it
knows not how to govern them; if defeated, skepticism affords but little
comfort in the night of disaster. We do not attach a fictitious
importance to Rationalism when we say that it was the prime agent which
prevented the Germans from the struggle of self-liberation, and that the
victory of Waterloo and the Congress of Vienna would never have been
needed had those people remained faithful to the precedents furnished by
the Reformers.

When Fichte was in his old age, and had completed his system of
philosophy, he published his _Addresses to the German People_. Political
writing was a new field for him, and yet, whoever will take the pains to
study the fruits of his thinking, will easily perceive that the spirit
animating the _Addresses_ was the same which pervaded his entire
philosophy. He saw the degradation of his country. Though at a time of
life when youthful fervor is supposed to have passed away, he became
inflamed with indignation at the insolence of the conqueror and the
apathy of his countrymen, and addressed himself to the consciousness of
the people by calling upon them to arise, and reclothe themselves with
their old historic strength. His voice was not disregarded. The result
proved that those who had thought him in his dotage, and only indulging
its loquacity, were much mistaken. He wrote that enthusiastic appeal
with a great aim. He had spent the most of his life in other fields, but
posterity will never fail to honor those who, whatever their habits of
thinking may have been, for once at least have the sagacity to see the
wants of their times, and possess the still higher wisdom of meeting
them. Fichte died in 1814; but it was at a time when, Simeon-like, he
c