substructure was developed the intellectual life of our time, whose
deepest significance consists in the attempt to reconcile the result of
free inquiry with the religious needs of the heart, and to lay a
foundation for the harmonious organization of mankind. Torn this way and
that, between hostile forces, in a continuous feud between faith and
knowledge, mankind seems to have lost the straight road of progress.
Reconciliation only appears possible when the thought of religious
reformation leads to a permanent explanation of the idea of religion,
and science remains conscious of the limits of its power, and does not
attempt to explain the domain of the supersensual world from the results
of natural philosophy.

The German nation not only laid the foundations of this great struggle
for an harmonious development of humanity, but took the lead in it. We
are thus incurring an obligation for the future, from which we cannot
shrink. We must be prepared to be the leaders in this campaign, which is
being fought for the highest stake that has been offered to human
efforts. Our nation is not only bound by its past history to take part
in this struggle, but is peculiarly adapted to do so by its special
qualities.

No nation on the face of the globe is so able to grasp and appropriate
all the elements of culture, to add to them from the stores of its own
spiritual endowment, and to give back to mankind richer gifts than it
received. It has "enriched the store of traditional European culture
with new and independent ideas and ideals, and won a position in the great
community of civilized nations which none else could fill." "Depth of
conviction, idealism, universality, the power to look beyond all the
limits of a finite existence, to sympathize with all that is human, to
traverse the realm of ideas in companionship with the noblest of all