For a long time, as we have seen, the development of nations, the tendency of history, has been toward a constantly extending abolition of the privileges which guarantee to the higher classes their position as higher and ruling classes. The wish for perpetuation of these, or personal interest, brings therefore every member of the upper classes who has not once for all, by a wide outlook upon his whole personal existence, raised himself above such considerations (and you will understand, Gentlemen, that these can form only very unusual exceptions) into a position which is from principle hostile to the progress of the people, to the extension of education and science, to the advance of culture, to all tendencies and victories of historical life.
This opposition of the personal interest of the upper classes to the progress of culture in the nation produces the great and inevitable immorality of the upper classes. It is a life whose daily requirements you only need picture to yourselves in order to feel the deep decline of character to which it must lead. To be obliged daily to take an attitude of opposition to everything great and good, to bewail its success, to rejoice at its failures, to check its further progress, to make futile or to curse the progress which has already been made, is like a continual existence in the enemy's country; and this enemy is the moral fellowship of the whole country in which you live, for which all true morality urges support. It is a continual existence, I say, in an enemy's country. This enemy is your own people, who must be looked upon and treated as an enemy, and this hostility must, at least in the long run, be craftily concealed and more or less artfully veiled.
From this arises the necessity either of doing what is against the voice of your own conscience, or of stifling this voice from the force of custom in order not to be annoyed by it, or, finally, of never knowing this voice, never knowing anything better or having anything better than the religion of your own advantage.
This life, Gentlemen, therefore leads necessarily to a complete lack of appreciation and a contempt for all ideal efforts, to a pitying smile when the great word "ideal" is even mentioned; to a deep lack of appreciation and of sympathy for everything beautiful and great; to a complete transformation of all moral elements in us into the one passion of selfish opportunism and the pursuit of pleasure.
This conflict between personal interest and the cultural development of the nation is, fortunately, not to be found in the lower classes of society.
In the lower classes, to be sure, there is, unfortunately, selfishness enough, much more than there should be; but this selfishness, if it exists, is the fault of individuals and not the inevitable fault of the class.
Even a very slight instinct tells the members of the lower classes that, so far as each one of them depends merely upon himself and merely thinks of himself, he can hope for no considerable improvement of his situation; but so far as the lower classes of society aim at the improvement of their condition as a class, so far does this personal interest, instead of opposing the course of history and therefore of being condemned to the aforesaid immorality, coincide in its tendency completely with the development of the people as a whole, with the victory of the ideal, with the progress of culture, with the vital principle of history itself—which is nothing else than the development of liberty. Or, as we have already seen, their cause is the cause of all humanity.
You are therefore in the fortunate position, Gentlemen, instead of being compelled to be dead to the idea, of being destined rather, through your own personal interests, to a greater receptiveness for it. You are in the fortunate position that that which forms your own true personal interest coincides with the throbbing heart-beat of history—with the active, vital principle of moral development. You can therefore devote yourself to historical development with personal passion and be sure that the more fervent and consuming this passion is, the more moral is your position, in the true sense which I have explained to you.
These are the reasons why the control of the fourth class over the State must produce a fullness of morality and culture and knowledge such as never yet existed in history.
But still another reason points in the same direction, which again is most intimately connected with all the considerations which we have stated and forms their keystone.