The idealists, who are impertinent enough to want human beings to be human, spoke up and while the King gave vent to his Old German fantasies, they imagined that they could begin to philosophize in New German. This had never happened before in Prussia. But the servants of the old despotism soon put a stop to these un-German activities. When this conflict had become sufficiently acute and uncomfortable, and the irascible King was in a state of great excitement, his servants, who had formerly managed affairs with such ease, now came to him and announced that the King would be unwise to encourage his subjects in their idle talk, they would not be able to control a race of people who talked. This led to a new edition of the old proscription of all the wishes and ideas men have cherished concerning human rights and duties, that is, it meant a return to the old ossified, servile state in which the slave serves in silence and the owner of land and people rules as silently as possible over well-trained, docile servants.
Silence is therefore the only means of communication.
A brutal state of affairs can only be maintained by means of brutality. And this brings me to the end of our common task of analyzing the philistine and the philistine state. You will hardly suggest that my opinion of the present is too exalted and if I do not despair about it, this is only because its desperate position fills me with hope. I would only point out that the enemies of philistinism, i.e., all thinking and suffering people, have arrived at an understanding for which formerly they lacked the means and that even the passive system of procreation characteristic of the old subjects now daily wins new recruits to serve the new race of men. However, the system of industry and commerce, of property and exploitation of man, will lead much faster than the increase in the population to a rupture within existing society which the old system cannot heal because, far from healing and creating, it knows only how to exist and enjoy.