Chapter 2

Speech

The times of barbarism are over, you peoples, when one dared to announce to you in the name of God that you were herds of cattle, placed on earth by God to serve a dozen sons of God as bearers of their burdens, as servants of their convenience, and finally for slaughter; that God had transferred His undisputed right of ownership over you to them, and that by virtue of a divine right, and as His representatives, they tormented you for your sins: you know it, or can convince yourselves if you do not yet know it, that you yourselves are not God's property, but that He has deeply imprinted His divine seal upon your breast, with freedom, that you belong to no one but yourselves. Nor do they presume to tell you anymore: we are stronger than you, we could have killed you all long ago; we have been so kind as not to do so; the life you live is therefore our gift. But we have not given it to you freely, but only lent it to you; our demand, therefore, to use it for our advantage, and to take it from you even when we can no longer use it, is not unjust. – If this line of reasoning is to hold, you have learned that you are the stronger ones, and they the weaker; that their strength lies in your arms, and that they stand miserable and helpless if you let your arms fall; examples have shown them this, before which they still tremble. Likewise, you will no longer believe them when they say that you are all blind, helpless, and ignorant, and that you cannot advise yourselves unless they guide you like minors by their paternal hands; they have only recently shown, through fallacies that the simplest among you would not have made, that they know no more than you, and that they plunge themselves and you into misery because they believe they know more. Do not listen to such pretexts any further; dare to ask the prince who wishes to rule you, by what right he rules over you?

By hereditary right, some mercenaries of despotism have asserted, though they are not its most astute defenders. For suppose that your currently living prince could have inherited such a right from his father, and he in turn from his, and so on upwards, from where did the first one get it, or had he no right, and how could he inherit a right he did not possess? – And then, you cunning sophists, do you truly believe that human beings can be inherited like a herd of cattle, or a pasture for them? The truth is not to be skimmed from the surface as you think; it lies deeper, and I ask you to take the small trouble to seek it out with me.[^3]

Man can neither be inherited, nor sold, nor given away; he can be no one's property, because he is and must remain his own property. He carries deep within his breast a divine spark that elevates him above animality and makes him a fellow citizen of a world whose first member is God – his conscience. This commands him absolutely and unconditionally – to will this, not to will that; and this freely and of his own accord, without any external compulsion. If he is to obey this inner voice – and it commands this absolutely – then he must also not be compelled externally; he must be freed from all foreign influence. Therefore, no stranger may rule over him; he himself must do so, according to the law within him: he is free and must remain free; nothing may command him but this law within him, for it is his sole law – and he contradicts this law if he allows another to be imposed upon him – humanity within him is annihilated, and he is degraded to the class of animals.

If this law is his sole law, then he may do what he wills everywhere where this law does not speak; he has a right to everything that is not forbidden by this sole law. Now, however, that without which no law is possible at all – freedom and personality – and furthermore, that which is commanded by the law, also belong to the domain of the not-forbidden; one can therefore say that man has a right to the conditions under which alone he can act dutifully, and to the actions that his duty requires. Such rights are never to be given up; they are inalienable. We have no right to alienate them.

I also have a right to the actions that the law merely permits; but I may also choose not to avail myself of this permission of the moral law; then I do not exercise my right; I give it up. Rights of the second kind are therefore alienable; but man must give them up voluntarily, he must never be compelled to alienate them; otherwise, he would be compelled by a law other than the law within him, and that is wrong on the part of him who does it, and on the part of him who suffers it, where he can change it. If I may give up my alienable rights unconditionally, if I may bestow them upon others, then I may also give them up conditionally; I may exchange them for alienations from another. From such an exchange of alienable rights for alienable rights arises the contract. I renounce the exercise of one of my rights on the condition that the other party likewise renounces the exercise of one of theirs. Such rights to be alienated in a contract can only be rights to external actions, not to internal dispositions; for in the latter case, neither party could ascertain whether the other fulfilled the conditions or not. Inner dispositions—truthfulness, respect, friendship, gratitude, love—are freely given; they are not acquired as rights.

Civil society is founded upon such a contract of all members with one, or of one with all, and can be founded on nothing else, since it is absolutely illegitimate to allow oneself to be given laws by another than oneself. Only by my voluntarily accepting civil legislation—by what sign, is irrelevant here—and thereby giving myself the law, does it become valid for me. I cannot allow any law to be imposed upon me without thereby renouncing humanity, personhood, and freedom. In this social contract, each member gives up some of their alienable rights, on the condition that other members also give up some of theirs.

If a member does not uphold their contract and reclaims their alienated rights, then society acquires the right to compel them to uphold it by infringing upon the rights guaranteed to them by society. They have voluntarily submitted to this infringement through the contract. From this arises the executive power.

This executive power cannot be exercised by the entire society without disadvantage; it is therefore transferred to several members or to one. The one to whom it is transferred is called the Prince.

The Prince, therefore, derives his rights from a transfer by society; but society can transfer no rights to him that it did not itself possess. The question, then, that we wish to investigate here—whether the Prince has a right to restrict our freedom of thought—is founded on the question of whether the state could have such a right.

The ability to think freely is the distinguishing difference between human understanding and animal understanding. In the latter, too, there are representations; but they follow one another necessarily, they produce one another, just as one movement in a machine necessarily produces another. To actively resist this blind mechanism of idea association, in which the mind behaves merely passively; to give a definite direction to one's own sequence of ideas by one's own power, according to one's own free will, is the prerogative of humanity, and the more one asserts this prerogative, the more human one is. The faculty in man by which he is capable of this prerogative is precisely that by which he wills freely; the manifestation of freedom in thought, just like its manifestation in willing, is an intimate component of his personhood; it is the necessary condition under which alone he can say: I am, I am an independent being. This manifestation, just as much as the other, assures him of his connection with the spirit world and brings him into harmony with it; for not only unanimity in willing, but also unanimity in thinking, should prevail in this invisible kingdom of God. Indeed, this manifestation of freedom prepares us for a more uninterrupted and stronger manifestation of it: by freely submitting our prejudices and our opinions to the law of truth, we first learn to bow down and fall silent before the idea of a law in general; this law first tames our selfishness, which seeks to govern the moral law. Free and disinterested love for theoretical truth, because it is truth, is the most fruitful preparation for the moral purity of dispositions. And could we have given up this right, so intimately connected with our personhood, with our morality—this path to moral refinement expressly laid out for us by creative wisdom—in the social contract? Would we have had the right to alienate an inalienable right? Would our promise to give it up have meant anything other than: we promise, upon entering your civil society, to become irrational creatures, we promise to become animals, so that it makes less work for you to tame us? And would such a contract be legitimate and good?

"But do you even want that?" they cry out to us; "Have we not loudly and solemnly enough given you permission to think freely?" And we will concede this; we will forget the anxious attempts made to deprive us of the best means; we will forget with what diligence they seek to color the old darkness in every new light; we will not quibble over words—yes, you permit us to think, since you cannot prevent it; but you forbid us to communicate our thoughts; thus, you do not claim our inalienable right to think freely, you merely claim the right to prevent us from communicating what we have freely thought.

So that we are sure not to argue with you about nothing;—do we truly possess such a right originally? Can we prove it?—If we have a right to everything that the moral law does not forbid, who could point to a prohibition of the moral law against communicating one's convictions? Who could point to another's right to prevent such communication, to regard it as an infringement on their property? "The other may thereby be disturbed in the enjoyment of their happiness, which is founded on their previous convictions, in their pleasant delusions, in their sweet dreams," you tell me;—but how can they be disturbed by my mere action, without listening to me, without paying attention to my words, without grasping them in their own thought-form? If they are disturbed, they disturb themselves; I do not disturb them. It is entirely the relationship of giving to receiving. Do I not have a right to share my bread, to let others warm themselves by my flame, to light their own from my light? If the other does not want my bread, let them not stretch out their hand to receive it; if they do not want my warmth, let them move away from my fire; to force my gifts upon them—that right, of course, I do not have.

However, since this right of free communication is founded not on a command but merely on a permission of the moral law, and is therefore, considered in itself, not inalienable; since, furthermore, the consent of the other, their acceptance of my gifts, is required for the possibility of its exercise: it is in itself conceivable that society might once and for all have revoked this consent, that it might have had every member promise, upon entering it, not to make their convictions known to anyone at all. With such a renunciation, it must surely not have been meant so seriously in general, and without regard to person; for do not those privileged by the state open their horn of plenty with the greatest possible generosity, and is it not merely due to our stubborn resistance that they have so far withheld its rarest treasures from us? But let us always concede what we would not so unconditionally concede, that we had a right, upon entering society, to give up our right to communicate: then the right of free reception stands opposed to this; the former cannot be alienated without the latter being alienated at the same time. Granted, you had a right to make me promise that I would share my bread with no one; but did you also have the right to compel the poor hungry person to eat your repulsive gruel, or to die? Do you want to sever the most beautiful bond that chains humans to humans, that makes spirits flow into spirits? Do you want to rob humanity of the most worthy exchange, the free and joyful giving and receiving of the noblest possession it holds? But why do I speak with emotion to your withered hearts? A dry and barren logical conclusion, which you cannot harm with all your sophistries, proves to you the illegitimacy of your demand. The right to freely receive everything that is useful to us is a component of our personhood; it belongs to our destiny to freely use everything that lies open for us for our spiritual and moral development; without this condition, freedom and morality would be a useless gift to us. One of the richest sources of our instruction and education is the communication from spirit to spirit. We cannot give up the right to draw from this source without giving up our spirituality, our freedom, and our personhood; therefore, we may not give it up; consequently, the other may also not give up their right to let us draw from it. Through the inalienability of our right to receive, their right to give also becomes inalienable. As to whether we force our gifts upon others, you yourselves know well. You know whether we bestow offices and honors upon those who pretend as if we had convinced them; whether we exclude from offices and dignities those who do not wish to hear our lectures or read our writings; whether we publicly insult and drive away those who write against our principles. That you nevertheless use our writings for wrapping your own; that we nevertheless have the brighter minds and better hearts of the nations on our side, and you have the simpletons, the hypocrites, the cowardly writers on yours—explain that to yourselves as best you can.

"But," you cry out to me, "we do not forbid you to distribute bread at all; only poison you shall not give." But what if what you call poison is my daily sustenance, by which I am healthy and strong? Should I foresee that the weak stomach of the other will not tolerate it? Did they die from my giving, or did they die from their eating? If they could not digest it, they should not have eaten it: I did not force-feed them; that privilege belongs only to you. Or suppose I had indeed considered what I gave to the other to be poison; I had given it to them with the intention of poisoning them—how will you prove that to me? Who can be my judge in this but my conscience! But, without analogy.

I may indeed spread truth, but not error.

Oh! What do you, who say this, call truth—what do you call error? Doubtless not what we others consider it; otherwise, you would have understood that your restriction nullifies the entire permission; that with the left hand you take back what you gave with the right; that it is absolutely impossible to communicate truth if it is not also permitted to spread errors. But, I will make myself clearer to you.

Doubtless you are not speaking here of subjective truth; for you do not mean to say: I may indeed spread what I, to the best of my knowledge and conscience, hold to be true; but I may not spread anything that I myself recognize as erroneous and false. Without a contract between me and you, you have no legally valid claim to my truthfulness; for this is only an inner, not an outer duty: through the social contract you obtain none, for you can never assure yourselves of the fulfillment of my promise, since you cannot read in my heart. Had I promised you truthfulness and had you accepted the promise, you would indeed be deceived, but through your own fault: I would have promised you nothing, since through my promise you would have acquired a right whose exercise is physically impossible. Of course, if I intentionally lie to you, if I knowingly and deliberately give you error instead of truth, I am a contemptible person; but I thereby offend only myself, not you; I have only to settle that with my conscience.

You are therefore speaking of objective truth; and this is!—Oh, you wise sophists of despotism, who are never at a loss for a definition—it is—the agreement of our representations of things with the things-in-themselves. The meaning of your demand is therefore—I blush on your behalf as I am about to say it:—if my representation truly agrees with the thing-in-itself, I may spread it; but if it does not truly agree with it, I should keep it to myself.

Agreement of our representations of things with the things-in-themselves could only be possible in two ways: namely, if either the things-in-themselves were actually made by our representations, or our representations were actually made by the things-in-themselves. Since both cases occur in human cognition, but are so intertwined that we cannot sharply separate them, it is immediately clear that objective truth in the strictest sense of the word directly contradicts the understanding of man and every finite being; that therefore our representations never agree, nor can agree, with the things-in-themselves. In this sense of the word, you cannot possibly expect us to spread the truth.

Nevertheless, there is a certain necessary way in which things must absolutely appear to all of us, according to the constitution of our nature, and insofar as our representations agree with this necessary form of knowability, we can also call them objectively true—namely, if the object is not to be called the thing-in-itself, but a thing necessarily determined by the laws of our faculty of cognition and by those of intuition (appearance). In this sense, everything that is produced according to a correct perception by the necessary laws of our faculty of cognition is objective truth. Besides this truth applicable to the world of senses, there is another, in an infinitely higher sense of the word; namely, when we do not first recognize the given nature of things through perception, but are to produce them ourselves through the purest, freest self-activity, according to the original concepts of right and wrong. What is in accordance with these concepts is true for all spirits, and for the Father of spirits; and truths of this kind are mostly very easy and very certain to recognize; our conscience calls them out to us. Thus, for example, it is an eternal, human, and divine truth that there are inalienable human rights, that freedom of thought belongs among them—that he to whom we entrusted our power to protect our rights acts most unjustly if he uses this very power to suppress them, and especially freedom of thought. Of such moral truths, there is no exception at all; they can never be problematic, but can always be traced back to the necessarily valid concept of the right. You are therefore not speaking of truths of the latter kind—which, incidentally, concern you little and are often deeply repugnant to you; for there is no dispute about them—you are speaking of the first human truth. You command that we should assert nothing that is not derived from correct perceptions, according to the necessary laws of thought. You are magnanimous, wise, benevolent fathers of humanity; you command us always to observe correctly, and always to conclude correctly; you forbid us even to err, so that we spread no errors. Noble guardians, we would rather not do that; it is as repugnant to us as it is to you. The only fault is that we do not know when we err. Could you not, then, in this way, with your paternal advice, provide us with a sure, always applicable, infallible criterion of truth?

You have already thought of that in advance. We are, for example, not to spread old, long-refuted errors, you say. Refuted errors? Refuted by whom? If these refutations were clear to us, if they satisfied us—do you think we would still assert those errors; do you believe that we prefer to err than to think correctly, prefer to rave than to be prudent, that we only need to recognize an error as an error to immediately adopt it; do you think that we write things into the world merely out of ingenious mischief, and to tease and annoy our good guardians, things of which we ourselves know very well that they are erroneous!

Those errors, then, are long refuted, you tell us on your word. So they must at least be refuted for you, since you will surely deal honestly with us. Would you not tell us, illustrious sons of earth, in how many nights, spent in serious contemplation, you discovered that which so many men, who, free from your other ruling cares, dedicate all their time to such investigations, have not yet been able to discover? Or whether you found it without any reflection, and without any instruction, merely through the help of some divine genius. Yet, we understand you, and long ago, instead of these investigations, so dry for you and your satellites, we should have presented your true thoughts. You are not speaking at all of what we others call truth or error—what does that concern you? Who would have wanted to spoil the years of the hope of the land with such gloomy speculations, years in which it refreshed itself for future ruling cares? You have divided the human faculties of mind with your subjects. To them you have left the thinking—though not for you, nor for themselves, for in your governments that is not at all necessary—they may do it for their pleasure, if they wish, but without further consequences. You will will for them. This common will residing in you then also determines the truth. Therefore, that is true which you will to be true; that is false which you will to be false. Why you will it, that is not our question, nor yours. Your will, as such, is the sole criterion of truth. Just as our gold and silver have value only under your stamp, so too do our concepts. Should an uninitiated eye dare to cast a glance into the mysteries of state administration, for which profound wisdom must be required, since, as is well known, the wisest and best among men are always elevated to its helm, then permit me a few timid remarks here. If I do not flatter myself too much, I discern some of the advantages you intend thereby. To subjugate the bodies of men is easy for you; you can put their feet in the stocks, their hands in chains; you can even, if need be, prevent them from speaking what they should not speak through fear of hunger or death. But you cannot always be present with the stocks, or with chains, or with executioners—nor can your spies be everywhere; and such a laborious government would leave you no time for human pleasures. You must, therefore, devise a means to subjugate him more securely and reliably, so that even without stocks and chains, he breathes no differently than you signal him. Cripple the primary principle of self-activity within him, his thought; if he no longer dares to think otherwise than you command him, directly or indirectly, through his confessor or through your religious edicts: then he is entirely the machine you desire, and now you can use him as you please. I admire in history, which is your favorite study, the wisdom of a series of the first Christian emperors. With every new government, truth changed; even during a single reign, if it lasted a little long, it had to be altered a couple of times. You have grasped the spirit of these maxims, but you—forgive the beginner in your art if he should err—have not yet penetrated deeply enough into it. One allows one and the very same truth to remain truth for too long; in this, modern statecraft has erred. The people finally grow accustomed to it, and take their habit of believing it for proof of its truth, whereas they should believe it solely and purely for the sake of your authority. Therefore, imitate your worthy models entirely, you princes; reject today what you commanded to be believed yesterday, and authorize today what you rejected yesterday, so that they never become unaccustomed to the idea that your will alone is the source of truth. You have, for example, for too long willed that one equals three; they have believed you, and unfortunately, they have become so accustomed to it that they have long since withheld the gratitude due to you, and believe they discovered it themselves. Avenge your authority; command, just once, that one equals one—not, of course, because the opposite contradicts itself, but because you will it.

I understand you, as you see; but I have to deal with an unruly people here, who ask not about your intentions, but about your rights. What shall I answer!

It is an inconvenient question, the question of right. I regret that I must part ways here with you, with whom I came so amicably thus far.

If you had the right to determine what we should accept as truth, then you would have to derive it from society, and society would have to have it through contract. Is such a contract possible? Can society make it a condition for its members, upon entering it, to—not necessarily believe certain propositions; for it can never assure itself of this, as an inner disposition—but merely to outwardly profess them, i.e., to say, write, or teach nothing against them? —for I wish to express the proposition as mildly as possible.

Physically, such a contract would be possible. If only those inviolable doctrines were fixed and sharply enough defined that one could incontrovertibly prove to anyone who had said anything against them—and you realize that this is asking for something—then one could indeed punish him for it, as for an external action.

But is it also morally possible, i.e., does society have a right to demand such a promise, and the member to give it; would not, in such a contract, inalienable human rights be alienated—which must not happen in any contract, and by which the contract becomes unlawful and void? —Free inquiry into every possible object of reflection, in every possible direction, and into the infinite, is undoubtedly a human right. No one may determine its choice, its direction, its limits, but he himself. We have proven this above. The only question here is whether he may not himself set such limits through contract! He was permitted to set such limits to his rights to external actions, which were not commanded by the moral law, but merely permitted. Here, nothing compels him to act at all, except perhaps inclination; this inclination he can indeed limit, where it does not restrict the moral law, by a self-imposed law. But when he has arrived at that limit of reflection, something certainly compels him to act, to transgress it and move beyond it, namely the essence of his reason, which strives into the infinite. It is the destiny of his reason to recognize no absolute limit; and thereby alone does it become reason, and he thereby alone a rational, free, independent being. Consequently, inquiry into the infinite is an inalienable human right.

A contract by which he set such a limit would not immediately mean: I will be an animal—but it would mean: I will be a rational being up to a certain point (namely, if those propositions privileged by the state were truly universally valid for human reason, which we have granted you, in addition to a host of other difficulties)—I will be a rational being up to a certain point, but as soon as I have reached it, an irrational animal.

If, then, an inalienable right to investigate beyond those fixed results has been proven, then at the same time the inalienability of the right to investigate beyond them in common has been proven. For whoever has the right to the end, also has it to the means, if no other right stands in his way; now, it is one of the most excellent means to advance oneself, to be instructed by others; consequently, everyone has an inalienable right to accept freely given instructions into the infinite. If this right is not to be abolished, then the right of the other to give such instructions must also be inalienable.

Society, therefore, has no right whatsoever to demand or accept such a promise; for it contradicts an inalienable human right: no member has a right to give such a promise; for it contradicts the personhood of the other, and the possibility that he acts morally at all. Everyone who gives it acts contrary to duty, and, as soon as he recognizes this, it becomes a duty to retract his promise.

You are startled by the boldness of my conclusions, friends and servants of the old darkness; for people of your kind are easily startled. You hoped that I would at least have reserved a cautious "insofar, of course," that I would have left a small back door open for your religious oath, for your symbolic books, and so forth. And even if I had, I would not open it here to please you;—precisely because one always dealt so neatly with you, always let you bargain too much, always so cautiously avoided the sores that hurt you most, washed at your Moorish blackness without wanting to wet your skin: that is why you have become so loud. From now on, you will gradually have to accustom yourselves to behold truth unveiled. —Yet I too will not dismiss you without comfort. What do you fear from those unknown lands beyond your horizon, into which you will never come? Ask the people who travel them: whether the danger of being eaten by moral giants, of being swallowed by skeptical sea monsters, is so great? See these bold circumnavigators of the world walking among you, at least as morally sound as you are. Why, then, do you shy away so much from the sudden enlightenment that would arise if everyone were allowed to enlighten as much as they could? The human spirit generally proceeds only step by step from clarity to clarity; you will still creep along in your age; you will keep your small chosen band, and the self-conviction of your great merits. And if it does occasionally make a violent leap forward through a revolution in the sciences—do not worry about that either. Even if it becomes day for others around you; your dim eyes, and those of your protégés so dear to your hearts, will keep you in a comfortable twilight; yes, it will become even darker around you for your comfort. You must know this from experience. Has it not, since the strong illumination that has fallen upon the sciences, especially for a decade, become much more confused in your heads than before?

And now permit me to turn to you again, you princes. You prophesy to us nameless misery from unlimited freedom of thought. It is purely for our own good that you take it upon yourselves and withhold it from us, like a harmful toy from children. You let newspaper writers, who are under your supervision, paint for us in fiery colors the disorders committed by divided minds, heated by opinions; you point there to a gentle people, sunk to the fury of cannibals, how it thirsts for blood, and not for tears, how it presses more eagerly to executions than to actors, how it carries around torn limbs of its fellow citizens, still dripping and steaming, amidst songs of jubilation, how its children spin bloody heads instead of tops—and we do not want to remind you of bloodier festivals that despotism and fanaticism, in their usual alliance, gave to this very people—not remind you that these are not the fruits of freedom of thought, but the consequences of previous long intellectual slavery,—not tell you that nowhere is it quieter than in the grave. —We will concede everything to you, we will immediately throw ourselves repentantly into your arms, and weeping beg you to hide us in your paternal heart from all the misfortunes that threaten us, as soon as you have answered us just one more respectful question.

Oh, you who, as we hear from your own mouths, are to watch over the happiness of nations as benevolent guardian spirits; you who—you have so often assured us—make this alone the highest purpose of your tender cares—why then, under your exalted supervision, do floods still devastate our fields, and hurricanes our plantations? Why do flames of fire still break forth from the earth, and consume us and our houses? Why do sword and plagues carry away thousands among your beloved children? Command first the hurricane to be silent: then command also the storm of our indignant opinions; let it rain first upon our fields when they are dry, and give us the refreshing sun when we implore you for it: then also give us the blessed truth.[^6] —You are silent? You cannot do that?

Well then! He who truly can do that, who builds new worlds from the ruins of devastation, and living bodies from the decay of putrefaction,—who makes flourishing vineyards thrive over collapsed volcanoes,—who lets people live, dwell, and rejoice over graves—will you be angry if we leave to Him also the care, the smallest of His cares, to annihilate, to mitigate, or, if we must suffer them, to apply to the higher culture of our spirit through our own strength, those evils that we incur through the use of His charter, confirmed with His divine seal?

Princes, that you do not wish to be our tormentors is good; that you wish to be our gods is not good. Why will you not resolve to descend to us, to be the first among equals? World government does not succeed for you; you know it! I do not wish to—my heart is too moved—present to you here the fallacies you have made every day until now, nor the far-reaching plans you have changed every quarter, nor point to the heaps of corpses of your own people, which you confidently expected to bring back in triumph. —One day you will survey with us a part of the great, certain plan, and will marvel with us that through your undertakings you blindly had to promote purposes you never conceived.

You are grossly misled; we do not expect happiness from your hand, for we know that you are human—we expect protection and restoration of our rights, which you surely took from us only by error.

I could prove to you that freedom of thought, unhindered, unrestricted freedom of thought alone establishes and secures the welfare of states; I could demonstrate it to you convincingly with irrefutable reasons; I could show it to you from history; I could point you, even now, to small and large countries that flourish through it, that became flourishing under your eyes through it; but I do not wish to do that. I do not wish to commend truth to you in its natural, godly beauty by the treasures it brings you as a morning gift. I think better of you than all those who did so. I trust you; you gladly hear the voice of earnest, but honest truth:

Prince, you have no right to suppress our freedom of thought: and what you have no right to do, you must never do, even if the worlds around you perish, and you and your people should be buried under their ruins. For the ruins of the worlds, for you, and for us under the ruins, He will provide, who gave us the rights that you respect.

What, then, would be the earthly happiness that you let us hope for, even if you could truly give it to us? —Feel in your bosoms, you who can enjoy everything that the earth has in pleasures. Remember the pleasures enjoyed. Were they worth your worries before enjoyment, were they worth the disgust and weariness that followed enjoyment? And once again, for our sake, would you plunge yourselves into these worries? Oh, believe it—all the goods you can give us, your treasures, your ribbons of orders, your glittering circles, or the flourishing of trade, the circulation of money, the abundance of provisions—their enjoyment, as enjoyment, is not worth the sweat of the noble, is not worth your worries, is not worth our gratitude. Only as instruments of our activity, as a closer goal towards which we run, do they have some value in the eyes of the rational. Our only happiness for this earth—if it is indeed to be happiness—is free, unhindered self-activity, working from one's own strength for one's own purposes with labor and effort and exertion. —Indeed, you usually refer us to another world, whose prizes you mostly set for the suffering virtues of man, for passive endurance and bearing. —Yes, we look into this other world, which is not as sharply cut off from the present as you believe, whose citizenship we already bear deep within our breast, and which we will not let you take from us. There, the fruits of our doing, not our suffering, are already preserved for us, they are already ripened under a milder sun than this climate has; permit us to strengthen ourselves here for their enjoyment through strenuous labor.

Therefore, you princes, you have no rights whatsoever over our freedom of thought; no decision over what is true or false; no right to determine the objects of our inquiry, or to set its limits; no right to prevent us from communicating the results thereof, be they true or false, to whom or how we wish. You also have no obligations in regard to it; your obligations pertain solely to earthly purposes, not to the transcendent purpose of enlightenment. In regard to this, you may remain entirely passive; it does not fall under your concerns. —But perhaps you would like to do even more than you are obliged to do. Well then! Let us see what you can do.

It is true, you are exalted persons, you princes; you are truly representatives of the deity not because of an innate sublimity of your nature—not as benevolent guardian spirits of humanity—but because of the exalted task of protecting its rights, which God gave it—because of the multitude of heavy and indispensable duties that such a task places upon your shoulders. It is a noble thought: millions of people have said to me—behold, we are of divine lineage, and the seal of our origin is on our brow—we cannot assert the dignity that this gives us, the rights that we brought with us to this earth from our paternal home as our endowment,—we millions cannot:—we place them in your hands; let them be sacred to you because of their origin, assert them in our name—be our foster father until we return to the house of our true Father.

You bestow offices and dignities in the state; you dispense treasures and honors; you support the needy, and give bread to the poor—but it is a gross lie if you are told that these are acts of charity. You cannot be charitable. The office you give is not a gift; it is a part of your burden that you place on the shoulders of your fellow citizen, if you give it to the most worthy; it is a robbery from society, and from the most worthy, if the less worthy received it. The honors you bestow, you do not bestow; virtue had already recognized them for everyone beforehand, and you are merely its exalted interpreters to society. The money you distribute was never yours; it was a trust property that society placed in your hands to alleviate all its needs, i.e., the needs of each individual, thereby. Society distributes it through your hands. The hungry person to whom you give bread would have bread if social connection had not compelled him to give it up; society gives back to him through you what was his. If you did all this with unblinking wisdom, with incorruptible conscientiousness, never failing, never erring—then you did what was your duty. You wish to do even more. Well then! Your fellow citizens are not merely citizens of the state; they are also citizens of the spirit-world, in which you hold no more exalted rank than they. As such, you have no demands to make of them, nor they of you. You may seek truth for yourselves, keep it for yourselves, enjoy it according to your full capacity for reception; they have no right to interfere. You may allow the investigation of truth outside yourselves to take its own course, without concerning yourselves in the slightest with it. You need not apply the power, influence, and authority that society placed in your hands to promote enlightenment – for society did not give it to you for that purpose. – What you do here is entirely out of good will, it is a surplus for you; in this way, you can truly earn merit for humanity, towards which you otherwise have only indispensable duties.

Honor and respect truth personally, and let this be observed of you. – We know, of course, that in the world of spirits you are our equals, and that truth, through the respect of the mightiest ruler, becomes no more sacred than through the homage rendered by the lowliest among the people; that even you, through your submission, honor not truth, but yourselves; yet we are at times – and many among us are always sensual enough to believe that a truth gains new luster from the brilliance of him who pays it homage. Make this delusion useful until it vanishes – let your peoples always believe that there is something even more sublime than yourselves, and that there are even higher laws than your own. Bow publicly with them before these laws, and they will conceive a greater reverence for them and for you.

Listen willingly to the voice of truth, whatever its subject may be, and let it always approach your throne without fear that it will outshine it. Do you wish to hide from it, shying away from the light? What have you to fear from it, if your heart is pure? Be obedient if it disapproves of your decisions; retract your errors if it convicts you of them. You have nothing to risk thereby. That you are mortal men, i.e., that you are not infallible, we always knew, and will not first learn it through your confession. Such submission does not dishonor you; the more powerful you are, the more it honors you. You could continue your measures; who could prevent you? You could knowingly and with full conviction continue to be unjust; who would dare to reproach you to your face for it? to call you what you truly are? But you resolve voluntarily – to honor yourselves and to act rightly – and through this submission to the law of right, which places you on par with the lowliest of your slaves, you simultaneously elevate yourselves to the rank of the highest finite spirit.

The sublimity of your earthly rank and all your external advantages you owe to birth. Were you born in the shepherd's hut, the very hand that now wields the scepter would wield the shepherd's staff. Every rational person will, for the sake of this scepter, honor in you the society you represent – but truly not you. Do you know to whom our deep bows, our respectful demeanor, our submissive tone are directed? To the representative of society, not to you. Clothe a man of straw in your royal attire, place your scepter in his stuffed hand, seat him on your throne, and let us approach him. Do you think we will miss the invisible emanation that is supposed to flow only from your divine person; that our backs will be less supple, our demeanor less respectful, our words less timid? Has it never occurred to you to investigate how much of this reverence you owe to yourselves? how you would be treated if you were nothing but one of us?

You will not learn it from your courtiers. They will solemnly swear to you that they honor and love only you and your person, not the prince in you, if they notice that you like to hear it. Even from the wise, you would never learn it, even if one could ever endure the air that your courtiers breathe. He would answer your question as the representative of society, not as you. To sometimes behold our personal worth, as in a mirror, in our dealings with our fellow citizens – this advantage is only for private individuals; the true worth of kings is not loudly esteemed until they are dead.

If you still desire an answer to this question, which is well worth answering, then you must give it to yourselves. Approximately to the same degree that you can respect yourselves, if you view yourselves not through the deceptive glass of your self-conceit, but in the pure mirror of your conscience, to that degree your fellow citizens respect you. If you wish to know, therefore, whether, if crown and scepter were taken from you, he who now sings songs of praise to you would compose songs of mockery about you; whether those who now respectfully avoid you would crowd around you to play mischief with you; whether you would be laughed at on the first day, coldly scorned on the second, and your existence forgotten on the third, or whether even then the man who, to be great, needed not to be king, would still be revered in you – then ask yourselves. If you desire not the former, but the latter; if you wish us to revere you for your own sake, then you must become venerable. But nothing makes a human venerable except free submission to truth and right.

You must not disturb free inquiry; you may promote it – and you can hardly promote it otherwise than through the interest you yourselves show in it, through the obedience with which you listen to its results. The honors you could give to truth-loving researchers – they seldom need them for others, and they never need them for themselves; their honor does not depend on your signatures and seals; it resides in the hearts of their contemporaries, who were enlightened by them, in the book of posterity, who will light their torches at their lamp, in the spirit-world, where the titles you give are not valid; the rewards – but what do I say, rewards? – the compensations for their loss of time in the service of others, are meager discharges of society's obligation towards them. Their true rewards are more sublime. They are freer activity and greater expansion of their spirit. They procure these for themselves, without your assistance. But even those compensations – let them be such that they do not shame them, and honor you; as free to the free, so that they may also refuse them. Never give them to buy them – you will then buy no servants of truth; they are never for sale.

Direct the inquiries of the spirit of research to the most current, most urgent needs of humanity; but direct them with a light, wise hand, never as masters, but as free collaborators, never as commanders over the spirit, but as joyful partakers of its fruits. Coercion is contrary to truth; only in the freedom of its native land, the spirit-world, can it flourish.

And especially – learn at last to know your true enemies, the only perpetrators of lèse-majesté, the only defilers of your sacred rights and your persons. They are those who advise you to leave your peoples in blindness and ignorance, to spread new errors among them, and to uphold the old ones, to hinder and forbid free inquiry of all kinds. They consider your realms to be realms of darkness, which absolutely cannot exist in the light. They believe that your claims can only be exercised under the cloak of night, and that you can rule only among the blinded and deluded. Whoever advises a prince to impede the progress of enlightenment among his people, tells him to his face: your demands are of such a nature that they outrage sound common sense; you must suppress it; your principles and your ways of acting tolerate no light; do not let your subjects become more enlightened, otherwise they will curse you; your intellectual faculties are weak; by no means let the people become wiser, otherwise they will see through you; darkness and night are your element, which you must seek to spread around you; you would have to flee from the day.

Only those who advise you to spread enlightenment around you have true trust and true respect for you. They consider your claims to be so well-founded that no illumination can harm them, your intentions so good that they must only gain more in every light, your heart so noble that you yourselves would endure the sight of your missteps in this light, and would wish to behold them, so that you could improve them. They demand of you that you, like the deity, should dwell in the light, to invite all people to your reverence and love. Listen only to them, and they will give you their counsel unpraised and unpaid.