Addresses to the German Nation

perhaps many a person currently fears, will completely
disappear.

I will therefore, since I am speaking only of Germans
in general, express many things that do not primarily
apply to those assembled here as nonetheless applying
to us, just as I will express other things that
primarily apply only to Us as applying to all Germans.
I perceive in the spirit, of which these addresses are an
outpouring, the interconnected unity, in which no member
considers the fate Schiksal: fate or destiny; Fichte implies a shared communal path rather than individual luck of any
other member as a fate foreign to himself—a unity
that must and shall arise if we are not to perish
entirely—I perceive this unity as already arisen,
perfected, and standing present before us. Fichte is employing a rhetorical strategy here: by speaking as if the German nation is already united in spirit, he hopes to make that unity a reality in the minds of his listeners, despite the political reality of French occupation.

2. I presuppose such German listeners who do
   not perhaps, with all that they are, dissolve purely
   into the feeling of pain over the loss they have suffered,
   and take pleasure in this pain, and feast upon
   their own inconsolability, and through this feeling
   intend to come to terms with the demand made upon them... Fichte is critiquing a form of passive "victimhood." He warns his audience that simply feeling sorry for their defeated state is a form of self-indulgence that prevents necessary national renewal.