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If we people have attentively followed the actions of the nobility since time immemorial, possess records concerning them, have, so to speak, continued them, and believed that we have, among the innumerable facts, identified certain guidelines which permit conclusions about this or that historical destiny; and if in accord with these carefully sifted and ordered conclusions we have sought to accommodate ourselves somewhat to the present and the future — then all this is uncertain and perhaps only a play of the intellect, for perhaps these laws which we have here tried to guess at don't exist at all. There is a small party which actually holds this opinion and which tries to prove that if a law exists, it can only read: The law is what the nobility does. This party sees only arbitrary acts of the nobility and rejects the popular tradition which in this party's opinion brings us only slight incidental advantage but most of the time grave damage because it gives people a false, insidious, thoughtlessness-provoking certainty. This damage is not to be denied, but the overwhelming majority of our people see its cause in the fact that tradition is by far not yet sufficient, hence that many more investigations must be undertaken in it, and that indeed its material, no matter how gigantic it may appear, is still far too little, and that centuries must still pass before it will be enough. What is sad for the present in this view is brightened by the belief that one day a time will come when tradition and its investigation will, breathing, as it were, a sigh of relief, make a period. Everything has become clear, the law belongs to the people alone, and the nobility disappears. [...] A party which, in addition to believing in the laws, would also reject the nobility would at once have the whole people on its side, but such a party cannot arise because nobody dares to reject the nobility. This is the edge of the knife on which we live.¹

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-8412-8_9

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