HOUSTON STEWART CHAMBERLAIN
THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Volume
II, Chapter 9A, page 185—232. The Teutons as Creators of a New Culture.
CONTENTS
185
SECOND PART
THE RISE OF A NEW
WORLD
Die
Natur schafft ewig neue Gestalten; was da
ist,
war noch nie; was war, kommt nicht wieder.
GOETHE.
186
(Blank page)
187
NINTH CHAPTER
FROM THE YEAR 1200 TO THE YEAR 1800
The
childhood shows the man,
As
morning shows the day; be famous then
By
wisdom; as thy empire must extend,
So
let extend your mind o'er all the world.
MILTON.
A. THE TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
Wir,
wir leben! Unser sind die Stunden,
Und
der Lebende hat Recht.
SCHILLER.
TEUTONIC
ITALY
The same
feature
of an indomitable individualism, which, in political as well as in
religious
affairs, conduced to the rejection of universalism and to the formation
of nations, led to the creation of a new world, that is to say, of an
absolutely
new order of society adapted to the character, the needs, and the gifts
of a new species of men. It was a creation brought about by natural
necessity,
the creation of a new civilisation, a new culture. It was Teutonic
blood
and Teutonic blood alone (in the wide sense in which I take the word,
that
is to say, embracing the Celtic, Teutonic and Slavonic, or North
European
races *) that formed the impelling force and the informing
* See
vol. i. chap. vi.
188
THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
power. It is
impossible
to estimate aright the genius and development of our North-European
culture,
if we obstinately shut our eyes to the fact that it is a definite
species
of mankind which constitutes its physical and moral basis. We see that
clearly to-day: for the less Teutonic a land is, the more uncivilised
it
is. He who at the present time travels from London to Rome passes from
fog into sunshine, but at the same time from the most refined
civilisation
and high culture into semi-barbarism — dirt, coarseness, falsehood,
poverty.
Yet Italy has never ceased for a single day to be a focus of highly
developed
civilisation; its inhabitants prove this by the correctness of their
deportment
and demeanour; what we have here is not so much a decadence that has
recently
set in, as men are apt to maintain, but rather a remnant of Roman
imperial
culture, regarded from the incomparably higher standpoint which we
occupy
to-day and by men who hold absolutely different ideals. How splendid
was
the glory of Italy, how it went ahead and held aloft the torch for
other
nations on the road to a new world, while it still contained in its
midst
elements outwardly latinised, but inwardly thoroughly Teutonic! The
beautiful
country, which had already under the empire degenerated into absolute
sterility,
possessed for many centuries a rich well of pure Teutonic blood: the
Celts,
the Langobardians, the Goths, the Franks, the Normans, had flooded
nearly
the whole land and remained, especially in the north and the south, for
a long time almost unmixed, partly because they, as uncultivated and
warlike
men, formed a caste apart, but also because (as already marked on p.
538, vol. i.) the legal rights of the “Romans“ and of the Teutons
remained
different in all strata of the population until well into the
thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries, in Lombardy, indeed, until past the beginning
of the fifteenth; and this naturally added considerably to the
189 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
difficulty of
fusion. “Thus these various Teutonic tribes,“ as Savigny points out,
“lived
with the main stock of the population (the remnant of the Roman Chaos
of
Peoples) locally mingling, but differing in customs and rights.“ Here,
where the uncultured Teuton, by constant contact with a higher culture,
first awoke to the consciousness of himself, many a movement first
found
the volcanic fire that burst into the formation of a new world:
learning
and industry, the obstinate assertion of civic rights, the early bloom
of Teutonic art. The northern third of Italy — from Verona to Siena —
resembles
in its peculiar development a Germany whose Emperor might have lived on
the other side of the high mountains. Everywhere German counts had
taken
the place of Roman provincial governors, and it was always only for a
short
time, till he was hastily called away, that a King resided in the land,
while a jealous rival King, the Pope, was near at hand and ever
rejoicing
in intrigues. In this way the old Germanic tendency to form self-ruling
cities, which is in the main an Indo-European characteristic, was able
at an early period to develop in Northern Italy and become the ruling
power
in the land. The extreme north led the way; but Tuscany soon followed
suit
and profited by the Hundred Years War between Pope and Emperor to wrest
the inheritance of Mathilda from both and to give to the world, in
addition
to a Pleiad of ever memorable cities, in which Petrarch, Ariosto,
Mantegna,
Correggio, Galilei and other immortals arose, the crown of all cities,
Florence — formerly the townlet of a margrave, which was soon to
represent
the essence of anti-Roman, creative individualism — to be the
birthplace
of Dante and Giotto, of Donatello, Leonardo and Michael Angelo — the
mother
of the arts, from whose breast all the great men, even those who were
born
at a distance, even a Raphael, first drew the nurture of perfection.
190 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
Now and now only
impotent Rome could adorn herself anew: the diligence and the
enterprise
of the men of the north had poured heavy sums into the Papal coffers,
while
at the same time their genius awakened and put at the disposal of the
declining
metropolis, which in the course of a two thousand years' history had
not
had a single creative thought, the immeasurable treasures of western
Teutonic
inventive power. This was not a rinascimento, as the
dilettantic
belles-lettrists, in exaggerated admiration of their own literary
hobbies,
imagined, but a nascimento — the birth of something entirely
new
— which, as it immediately, leaving the paths of tradition, pursued its
own path in art, at the same time unfurled its sails to explore the
oceans
from which the Greek and Roman “hero“ had shrunk in terror, and gave
the
eye its telescope to reveal to human perception the hitherto
impenetrable
mystery of the heavenly bodies. If we simply must see in this a
Renaissance,
it is not the rebirth of antiquity, and least of all the rebirth of
inartistic,
unphilosophic, unscientific Rome, but simply free man's regeneration
from
out the all-levelling Imperium: freedom of political, national
organisation
in contrast to cut-and-dried common pattern; freedom of rivalry, of
individual
independence in work and creation and endeavour, in contrast to the
peaceful
uniformity of the civitas Dei; freedom of the senses of
observation
in contrast to dogmatic interpretations of nature; freedom of
investigation
and thought in contrast to artificial systems after the manner of
Thomas
Aquinas; freedom of artistic invention and shaping in contrast to
hieratically
fixed formulas; finally, freedom of faith in contrast to religious
intolerance.
In beginning this chapter, and at the same time a new division of this
work with reference to Italy, I must disclaim any scrupulous attention
to chronology; it would be altogether inadmissible to assert in so many
words
191 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
that the rinascimento
of free Teutonic individuality began in Italy; rather might it be said
that the first imperishable blossoms of its culture made their
appearance
there; but I wanted to call attention to the fact that even here in the
south, at the doors of Rome, the sudden outburst of civic independence,
industrial activity, scientific earnestness, and artistic creative
power
was through and through Teutonic, and in that sense anti-Roman. A
glance
at that age (to which I shall recur) proves it, a glance at the present
age equally so. In the meantime, two circumstances have led to a
progressive
decrease of the Teutonic blood in Italy: on the one hand, the
unhampered
fusion with the ignoble mixed population, on the other, the destruction
of the Teutonic nobility in never-ending civil wars, in the conflicts
between
cities, in the blood-feuds and other outbursts of wild passion. We need
only read the history of one of these cities, for example, Perugia,
which
in the upper ranks of its society was almost completely
Gothic-Langobardic!
It is scarcely comprehensible how with such ceaseless slaughter of
whole
families (which began as soon as the city became independent), single
branches
still retained something of their genuinely Teutonic character until
well
into the sixteenth century; after that the Teutonic blood was
exhausted.
* It is evident that the hastily acquired culture, the violent
assimilation
of an essentially foreign civilisation, the sudden revelation,
moreover,
of Hellenism which was in sharpest contrast to them yet mentally akin,
perhaps too, the incipient fusion with a blood which was poison to
Teutons
... it is evident that all these things had not merely conduced to a
miraculous
outburst of
* Goethe's unerring eye has perceived the race-relations here; of the
Italian
Renaissance he says: “It was as if the children of God had wedded the
daughters
of men,“ and he calls Pietro Perugino “an honest German soul“ (Ital.
Reise, 18/10/86 and 19/10/86).
192 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
genius, but had
at the same time bred madness. * If any one ever wishes to prove an
affinity
between genius and madness, let him point to Italy of the Trecento,
Quattrocento and Cinquecento! With all its permanent
importance
for our new culture, this “Renaissance“ in itself reminds us more of
the
paroxysm of death than of a phenomenon that guarantees vitality. A
thousand
glorious flowers burst forth as if by magic, where immediately before
the
uniformity of an intellectual desert had prevailed; a sudden blossoming
everywhere; in giddy haste talents just awakened to activity storm the
highest peak: Michael Angelo might almost have been a personal pupil of
Donatello, and it was only by an accident that Raphael did not actually
sit at Leonardo's feet. We get a vivid conception of this synchronism
when
we remember that the life of Titian alone extends from Sandro
Botticelli
to Guido Reni! But the flame of genius died down even more quickly than
it had blazed up. When the heart was throbbing most proudly, the body
was
already in the fullness of corruption; Ariosto, born a year before
Michael
Angelo, calls the Italy of his time “a foul-smelling sewer“:
- O d'ogni
vizio
fetida
sentina,
- Dormi,
Italia
imbriaca!
- Orlando
Furioso xvii. 76.
And if, hitherto,
I have mentioned the plastic arts alone, I have done so for the sake of
simplicity and because I wished to deal with the sphere which is the
most
familiar though the same truth holds good in all spheres. When Guido
Reni
was still quite young, Tasso died and with him Italian poetry; a few
years
later Giordano Bruno went to the stake, Campanella to the rack — the
end
of Italian philosophy — and shortly before Guido, Italian natural
science
closed with Galilei the career which it
* He who has not time for detailed historical studies should read the
chapter
on Perugia in John Addington Symonds' Sketches in Italy.
193
THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
had so gloriously
begun with Ubaldi, Varro, Tartaglia, and others, above all with
Leonardo
da Vinci. The course of history, north of the Alps, was altogether
different:
such a brilliant height was never reached, nor was there such a
catastrophe.
This catastrophe admits only one explanation: the disappearance of the
creative minds, in other words, of the race that had produced them. One
walk through the gallery of busts in the Berlin Museum will convince us
that in truth the type of the great Italians is absolutely extinct
to-day.
* Now and again they flash upon our memory when we review a troop of
those
splendid, gigantic labourers who build our streets and railways: the
physical
strength, the noble brow, the bold nose, the glowing eye; but they are
only poor survivors of the shipwreck of Italian Teutonism. This
disappearance
is adequately explained by the facts adduced, as far as physique is
concerned,
but there is another important consideration, the moral suppression of
definite tendencies of mind, and hence, so to speak, of the soul of the
race; the noble was degraded into a worker of the soil, the ignoble
became
master and lorded it as he thought proper. The gallows of Arnold of
Brescia,
the stakes of Savonarola and Bruno, the instruments of torture by which
Campanella and Galilei suffered, are only visible symbols of a daily,
universal
struggle against the Teuton, of a systematic uprooting of the freedom
of
the individual. The Dominicans, formerly ex officio
Inquisitors,
had now become reformers of the Church and philosophers; the Jesuits
had
carefully provided beforehand against such deviations from the
Orthodox;
he who acquires even a little information about their activity in
Italy,
from the sixteenth century onwards — from the history
* “Les Florentins d'aujourd'hui ne resemblent en rien à ceux
de la Renaissance, ...“ says one of the most exquisite judges,
Ujfalvi
(De l'Origine des familles, &c., p. 9).
194 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
of the order,
let us say, by its admirer, Buss — will no longer wonder at the sudden
disappearance of all genius, that is to say, of everything Teutonic.
Raphael
had still had the boldness to raise in the middle of the Vatican (in
the
“Disputa“) an immortal monument to Savonarola, whom he fervently
admired:
Ignatius, on the other hand, forbade even the mention of the Tuscan's
name.
* Who could live in Italy to-day and move among its amiable, highly
gifted
inhabitants without feeling with pain that here a nation was lost and
lost
beyond all hope, because the inner impelling force, the greatness of
soul,
that would correspond to their talent are lacking? As a matter of fact,
Race alone confers this force. Italy possessed it, so long as it
possessed
Teutons; yes, even to-day its population reveals, in those parts where
Celts, Germans and Normans formerly were specially numerous, the
thoroughly
Teutonic industry, and gives birth to men who strive with the energy of
despair to unite the country and guide it on to glorious paths: Cavour,
the founder of the new Kingdom, was born in the extreme north; Crispi,
who knew how to steer it past cliffs of danger, in the extreme south.
But
how can a people be again raised up, when the fountain of its strength
has run dry? And what does it signify when a Giacomo Leopardi calls his
people a “degenerate race“ and holds up to them the example of their
ancestors?
† The ancestors of the great majority of the
* Raphael's enthusiastic admiration for Savonarola, for his master
Perugino,
and his friend Bartolomeo (see Eugene Müntz: Raphaël,
1881, p. 133) is almost of as much importance in fixing the race of
these
men as the fact that Michael Angelo never mentioned the Madonna, and
only
once in jest mentioned a Saint, so that one of the greatest authorities
on him could call him “an unconscious Protestant.“ In one of his
sonnets
Michael Angelo warns the Saviour not to come to Rome in person, where a
trade is carried on in His divine blood.
- E'l
sangue di Cristo si vend' a giumelle
and
where the priests would flay him to sell his skin.
† Cf. the two Sonnets: All' Italia and Sopra il
monumento
di Dante.
195 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
Italians to-day
are neither the sturdy Romans of ancient Rome, those patterns of simple
manliness, indomitable independence and rigidly legal sentiment, nor
these
demigods in strength, beauty and genius, who on the morning of our new
day, in one single swarm, soared up like larks greeting the dawn from
the
sun-kissed soil of Italy to the heaven of immortality; no, their
genealogy
goes back to the countless thousands of liberated slaves from Africa
and
Asia, to the jumble of various Italic peoples, to the military colonies
settled among them from all countries in the world, in short, to the
Chaos
of Peoples which the Empire so ingeniously manufactured. And the
present
position of the country as a whole simply signifies a victory of this
Chaos
over the Teutonic element, which had been added at a later time and
which
had long maintained its purity. This is the reason, moreover, why that
Italy — which three centuries ago was a torch of civilisation and
culture
— is now one of the nations that lag behind, that have lost their
balance
and cannot again find it. For two cultures cannot exist on an equal
footing
side by side; that is out of the question: Hellenic culture could not
live
on under Roman influence, Roman culture disappeared before the spread
of
the Egypto-Syrian; it is only where the contact is purely external, as
in the case of Europe and Turkey, or a fortiori
Europe and China, that no perceptible influence is exercised, and even
here the one must in time destroy the other. Now such countries as
Italy
— I might at once add Spain — stand in a very close relation to us in
the
north: the great achievements of their past prove their former
blood-relationship;
they cannot possibly withdraw themselves from our influence, from our
incomparably
greater strength; but where they imitate us to-day, they do so not of
an
impelling need, not on account of an inner, but of an outer necessity;
holding up before their gaze ancestors from
196 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
whom they are
not descended, their own history and our example both lead them into
false
paths, and finally they are unable to preserve even that one thing
which
might continue theirs, a different, perhaps in many respects inferior,
but at any rate, genuine originality. *
THE
TEUTONIC MASTER-BUILDER
In naming Italy, I only wished to give an example, but I think I have
at
the same time provided a proof. As Sterne says: an example is no more
an
argument than the cleaning of a mirror is a syllogism, but it enables
us
to see better, and that is the important thing. Wherever the reader
casts
his eyes, he will find examples to prove the fact that the present
civilisation
and culture of Europe are specifically Teutonic, fundamentally distinct
from all the un-Aryan ones and very essentially different from the
Indian,
the Hellenic and the Roman, directly antagonistic to the mestizo ideal
of the anti-national Imperium and the so-called “Roman“ system of
Christianity.
The matter is so perfectly clear that further discussion would surely
be
superfluous; besides, I can refer the reader to the three preceding
chapters,
which contain a large number of actual proofs.
This one fact had first to be laid down. For our world of to-day is
absolutely
new, and in order to comprehend it and form an estimate of its rise and
present condition, the first fundamental question is: Who has created
it?
The new world was created by the same Teuton who after such an
obstinate
struggle discarded the old. He alone possessed that “wild willing“ of
which
I spoke at the end of the last chapter, the
* The views here expressed — bitterly opposed and ridiculed on many
hands
— have in the meantime been brilliantly confirmed by the strictly
anthropological,
soberly scientific investigations of Dr. Ludwig Woltmann, which are now
to be had for the first time in connected form: Die Germanen und
die
Renaissance in Italien, 1905.
197 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
determination
not to surrender, but to remain true to self. He alone held the view
which
the Teuton Goethe expressed later:
- Jedes
Leben
sei zu
führen,
- Wenn man
sich
nicht
selbst vermisst;
- Alles
könne man
verlieren,
- Wenn man
bliebe, was
man ist. *
He alone — like
Paracelsus
of Hohenheim — chose as his motto in life the words: Alterius non
sit,
qui suus esse potest (Let him be no other's, who can be his own).
Will
this be censured as empty pride? Surely it is only the recognition of a
manifest fact. Will the objection be offered that no mathematical proof
is possible? Surely from all sides this fact is borne in upon us with
the
same certainty as that twice two makes four.
Nothing is more instructive in this connection than a reference to the
manifest significance of purity of race. † How feebly throbs to-day the
heart of the Slav, who had entered history with such boldness and
freedom;
Ranke, Gobineau, Wallace, Schvarcz, all historians qualified to give an
opinion, testify to the fact that, though highly gifted, he is losing
his
real informing power and the constancy to carry out what he undertakes;
anthropology solves the riddle, for it shows us (see vol. i. pp.
505,
528)
that by far the greater number of the Slavs to-day have by mingling
with
another human race lost the physical — and naturally also the moral —
characteristics
of their ancestors, who were identical with the ancient Teutons. And
yet
there is still in these nations so much Teutonic blood that they form
one
of the greatest civilising forces in the continuous subjection of the
world
by Europe. Certainly near Eydtkuhnen we cross a boundary which is but
too
sadly obvious, and the hem
* Every life may be led, if only man's self be not missed; Everything
may
be lost, if we remain what we are.
† For all further details on this point I refer to vol. i. chaps.
iv. and vi.
198 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
of German culture
which stretches along the Baltic, as well as the thousand districts in
the interior of Russia, where the astonished traveller suddenly
encounters
the same strength of pure race, only make the contrast all the more
striking;
nevertheless, there is still a certain specifically Teutonic impulse
here,
in truth only a shadow, but it bears the stamp of blood-relationship
and
therefore produces something, in spite of all the resistance of the
hereditary
Asiatic culture.
In addition to its purity the Teutonic race reveals another feature of
importance in the understanding of history: its diversity of form; of
this
the history of the world offers no second example. Both in the
vegetable
and the animal kingdoms we find among genera of a family and among the
species of a genus a very varying “plasticity“: in the case of some the
shape is, as it were, of iron, as though all the individuals were cast
in one and the same unchanging mould; in other cases, however, we find
variations within narrow limits, and in others again (think of the dog
and the hieracium!) the variety of form is endless; it is constantly
producing
something new; such creatures, moreover, are always distinguished by
their
tendency to unlimited hybridising, by which again races, new and pure
through
in-breeding (see vol. i. p.
269), are continually produced. The Teutonic peoples resemble the
latter;
their plasticity is extraordinary, and every crossing between their own
different tribes has enriched the world with new models of noble
humanity.
Ancient Rome, on the other hand, had been an example of extreme
concentration
both in politics * and in the intellectual sphere: the city walls the
boundaries
of the Fatherland, the inviolability of law the boundaries of the
intellect.
Hellenism, so infinitely rich intellectually, rich too in the formation
of dialects and of races with distinct customs, is much
* See vol. i. chap. ii.
199 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
more closely
related
to Teutonism; the Aryan Indians also betray a close relationship by
their
remarkable talent for ever inventing new languages and by their clearly
marked particularism; these two human races perhaps wanted only the
historical
and geographical conditions to develop with the same strength of
uniformity,
and yet at the same time of many-sidedness, as the Teutons. But
considerations
of this nature lead us into the domain of hypotheses: the fact remains
that the plasticity of Teutonism is unique and incomparable in the
history
of the world.
It is not unimportant to remark — though I do so only as a parenthesis
because I wish to avoid philosophising in connection with history —
that
the characteristic, indestructible individualism of the genuine Teuton
is manifestly connected with this “plasticity“ of the race. A new tribe
presupposes the rise of new individuals; the fact that new tribes are
always
ready to make their appearance also proves the constant presence of
particular,
distinctive individuals, impatiently champing the bit that curbs the
free
exercise of their originality. I should like to make the assertion that
every outstanding Teuton is virtually the starting-point of a new
tribe,
a new dialect, a new view of life's problems. *
It was by thousands and millions of such “individualists,“ that is,
genuine
personalities, that the new world was built up. †
And so we recognise the Teuton as the master-builder and agree with
Jacob
Grimm when he asserts that it is a gross delusion to imagine that
anything
great
* Cf. the details in the preceding chapter, p.
151.
† Some muddle-headed people of the present day confuse individualism
and
“subjectivity,“ and then advance some silly reproach of weakness and
inconstancy,
whereas we have here obviously to deal with the “objective“ recognition
and — in men like Goethe — the “objective“ judgment of self, and from
both
of these we derive far-seeingness, sureness, and an unerring sense of
freedom.
200 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
can originate
from “the bottomless sea of a universality.“ *
Various, indeed, were the racial individualities of the Teutons, many
the
complicated crossings of their tribes: they were surrounded beyond the
boundaries where their blood had been preserved in comparative purity,
by branches related to them in various degrees of consanguinity: even
in
their midst there were groups and individuals who were half-Teutons,
quarter-Teutons,
and so forth; yet all these, under the indefatigable impulse of the
central
creative spirit, played their part in contributing something of their
own
to the sum of the accomplished task:
- When Kings
build,
the carters are kept busy!
SO-CALLED
HUMANITY
Now if we wish to judge rightly the history of the growth of this new
world,
we must never lose sight of the fact of its specifically Teutonic
character.
For as soon as we speak of humanity in general, as soon as we fancy
that
we see in history a development, a progress, an education, &c., of
“humanity,“ we leave the sure ground of facts and float in airy
abstractions.
For this humanity, about which men have philosophised to such an
extent,
suffers from the serious defect that it does not exist at all. Nature
and
history reveal to us a great number of various human beings, but no
such
thing as humanity. Even the hypothesis that all these beings, as the
offshoots
of one original stem, are physically related to each other, has
scarcely
so much value as Ptolemaeus' theory of the heavenly spheres; for the
latter
explained by demonstration something present and visible, while every
speculation
regarding a “descent“ of man ventures upon a problem which, to begin
* Geschichte der deutschen Sprache, 2nd ed. p. 111.
201 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
with,
exists only in the imagination of the thinker, is not presented by
experience
and should consequently be submitted to a metaphysical forum to be
tested
in regard to its admissibility. But even if this question of the
descent
of men and their relationship to one another were to leave the realm of
phrases and enter that of the empirically demonstrable, it would hardly
help us in forming our judgment of history; for every explanation by
causes
implicates a regressus in infinitum; it
is
like the unrolling of a map; we go on seeing something new — something
new that belongs to that which is old — and even though the consequent
widening of our sphere of observation may contribute to the enriching
of
our mind, still each individual fact remains as before, just what it
was,
and it is very doubtful whether our judgment is rendered essentially
more
acute by the knowledge of a more comprehensive connection — indeed, the
reverse is just as possible. “Experience is boundless, because
something
new may always be discovered,“ as Goethe remarks in his criticism of
Bacon
of Verulam and the so-called inductive method; on the other hand, the
essence
and purpose of judgment is limitation. Excellence in judgment depends
upon
acuteness, not upon compass; the exactitude of what the eye sees will
always
be more important than its extent; hence too the inner justification of
the more modern methods of historical research, according to which
explanatory,
philosophising, general expositions are abandoned in favour of
painfully
minute investigation of individual facts. Of course, as soon as the
science
of history loses itself in endless data, all that it accomplishes is to
“shovel observations backwards and forwards“ (as Justus Liebig says in
righteous indignation at certain inductive methods of investigation); *
yet, on the other hand, it is certain that the accurate knowledge of a
single case is more
* Reden und Abhandlungen, 1874, p. 248.
202 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
serviceable to
the judgment than the survey of a thousand that are shrouded in mist.
In
fact, the old saying: non multa, sed multum, proves to be
universally
true, and it also teaches us something which at the first glance we
should
hardly expect of it, namely, the right method of generalisation, which
consists in never leaving the basis of facts, and not being satisfied,
like children, with would-be “explanations“ from causes (least of all
in
the case of abstract dogmas such as development, education, &c.),
but
in continuously endeavouring to give a more and more clear perception
of
the phenomenon itself in its autonomous value. If we wish to simplify
great
historical complexes and yet to summarise with strict correctness, we
should,
to begin with, take the indisputable concrete facts, without linking
any
theory on to them; the Why will soon demand its place, but it should
come
only second, not first; the Concrete takes precedence. To arm ourselves
with an abstract idea of humanity and with presuppositions derived from
it, and then to face the phenomena of history and try to form a
judgment
on them is to start with a delusion; the actually present, individually
limited, nationally distinct human beings make up all that we know
about
humanity; there we must stop. The Hellenic people, for example, is such
a concrete fact. Whether the Hellenes were related to the peoples of
Italy,
to the Celts and Indo-Eranians, whether the diversity of their tribes,
which we perceive even in the earliest times, corresponds to a
diversity
in the mingling in various degrees of men of different origin, or is
the
result of a differentiation brought about by geographical conditions,
&c.,
all these are much debated questions, the answering of which some day —
even should it be accomplished with certainty — would not in any way
alter
the great indisputable fact of Hellenism with its peculiar, unique
language,
its particular virtues and failings, its extra-
203 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
ordinary talent
and the strange limitations of its intellect, its versatility,
industrial
zeal and over-craftiness in business, its philosophic leisure and
Titanic
imaginative power. Such a fact in history is absolutely concrete,
tangible,
manifest and at the same time inexhaustible. Truly, it is not modest on
our part not to be satisfied with something so inexhaustible; and we
are
nothing less than foolish if we do not value aright these primal
phenomena
(Urphänomene) — to use again an expression of Goethe's —
but,
in the delusion that we can “explain“ them by expansion, dissolve and
dissipate
them, till they are no longer perceptible to the eye. We do this, for
example,
when we trace back the artistic achievements of the Hellenes to
Phoenician
and other pseudo-Semitic influences and fancy that thereby we have
contributed
something to the explanation of this unique miracle; yet the ever
inexhaustible
and inexplicable primal phenomenon of Hellenism is in this way rather
amplified
but is in no way explained. For the Phoenicians carried the elements of
Babylonian and Egyptian culture everywhere; why did the seed only
spring
up where Hellenes had settled? And why, above all, not among those very
Phoenicians themselves, who surely should have reached a higher stage
of
refinement than the people to whom they — as is supposed — first
transmitted
the beginnings of culture? *
In this province we are simply floating on fallacies when we — as Sir
Thomas
Reid mockingly says — “explain“ the day by the night, because the one
follows
the other. They have no lack of answers, those people who have never
grasped,
that is, never comprehended as
* The discoveries in Crete, &c., have meanwhile once for all
dissipated
the whole myth of Phoenician influence; even so biased a witness as
Salomon
Reinach admits that “ces découvertes portent le coup de
grâce
à toutes les théories qui attribuent aux
Phéniciens
une part prépondérante dans les très vieilles
civilisations
de l'Archipel ...“ (Anthropologie, 1902, Janv.-Févr.,
p. 39).
204 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
an insoluble
problem,
the great central question of life — the existence of the individual
being.
We ask these omniscient worthies how it is that the Romans, near
relatives
of the Hellenes (as Philology, History, Anthropology permit us to
suppose),
were yet in almost every single talent their very opposites. In answer
they refer to the geographical position. But even the geographical
position
is not very different, and the proximity of Carthage and of Etruria
gave
ample opportunity for stimuli as strong as those of the Phoenicians.
And
if the geographical situation is the decisive matter, why did ancient
Rome
and the ancient Romans so completely and irrevocably disappear? The
most
incomparable magician in this line was Henry Thomas Buckle, who
“explains“
the intellectual pre-eminence of the Aryan Indians by their eating
rice.
* In truth, a consoling discovery for budding philosophers! But two
facts
are opposed to this explanation. In the first place, “rice is the
principal
food of the greatest portion of the human race“; secondly, the Chinese
are the greatest rice-eaters in the world, since they consume as much
as
three pounds of it a day. † But the pretty clearly defined complex of
peoples
* History of Civilisation in England, vol. i. c. 2. The
reader
must read for himself the extremely ingenious train of reasoning with
the
details, collected with infinite pains, concerning the produce of the
rice-fields,
the amount of starch contained in the rice, the relation of carbon to
oxygen
in various foods, &c. The whole house of cards falls to
pieces
as soon as the author seeks to substantiate the irrefutability of his
proof
by further examples and for this purpose refers to Egypt. “The
civilisation
of Egypt being like that of India, caused by the fertility of the soil,
and the climate being also very hot, there were in both countries
brought
into play the same laws and there naturally followed the same results.“
So writes Buckle. But it would be difficult to imagine two more
different
cultures than the Egyptian and the Brahman; the similarities which one
could of course point to are altogether external, just such as the
climate
can account for, but otherwise these peoples differ in everything — in
political and social organisation and history, in artistic qualities,
in
intellectual gifts and achievements, in religion and thought, in the
foundation
of character.
† Ranke: Der Mensch, 2nd ed. i. 315 and 334. In Hueppe's
205 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
that make up the
Aryan Indians forms an absolutely unique phenomenon among mankind; they
possessed gifts such as no other race has ever possessed, and which led
to immortal, incomparable achievements; at the same time their peculiar
limitations were such that their individuality already contained in it
their fate. Why did the principal food of the greatest portion of
mankind
have this effect only once, in point of space at one place, in point of
time at one epoch? And if we wished to mention the very antithesis of
the
Aryan Indians, we should have to name the Chinese; the socialistic
friend
of equality in contrast to the absolute aristocrat; the unwarlike
peasant
in contrast to the born warrior; the utilitarian, above all others, in
contrast to the idealist; the positivist, who seems organically
incapable
of raising himself even to the conception of metaphysical thought, in
contrast
to that born metaphysician upon whom we Europeans fix our eyes in
admiration,
never daring to hope that we could ever overtake him. And withal, as I
have said, the Chinaman eats still more rice than the Indo-Aryan!
Nevertheless, in pursuing to the point of absurdity the mode of thought
so common among us, I have had only one object in view, to reveal
clearly,
by cases of extreme error, whither it leads; once our distrust is
aroused,
we shall look back and perceive that even the most sensible and sure
observations
in regard to such phenomena as human races do not possess the value of
explanations, but signify merely an extension of our horizon, whereas
the
phenomenon itself, in its concrete reality, remains as before the only
source of all sound judgment and true understanding. I hope I have
convinced
the reader that there is a hierarchy of facts and that, as soon as we
reverse
them, we are building castles in the air. Thus, for example, the notion
Handbuch
der Hygiene (1899), p. 247, the expert will find a humorous
explanation
of the hypothesis that rice is especially good for philosophers.
206 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
“Indo-European“
or “Aryan“ is admissible and advantageous when we construct it from the
sure, well investigated, indisputable facts of Indianism, Eranianism,
Hellenism,
Romanism, and Teutonism; for, in so doing, we never for a moment leave
the ground of reality, we bind ourselves to no hypothesis, we build no
unsubstantial sham bridges over the gulf of unknown causes of
connection;
on the other hand, we enrich our world of conception by appropriate
systematic
arrangement, and, while we unite what is manifestly related, we learn
at
the same time to separate it from the unrelated, and prepare the way
for
further perceptions and ever new discoveries. But whenever we reverse
the
process and take a hypothetical Aryan for our starting-point — a being
of whom we know nothing at all, whom we construct out of the remotest,
most incomprehensible sagas, and patch together from linguistic
indications
which are extremely difficult to interpret, a being whom every one can,
like a fairy, endow with all the gifts that he pleases — we are
floating
in a world of abstractions and necessarily pronounce one false judgment
after the other, a splendid example of which we see in Count Gobineau's
Inégalité
des races humaines. Gobineau and Buckle are the two poles of an
equally
wrong method: the one bores like a mole in the dark ground and fancies
that from the soil he can explain the flowers, though rose and thistle
grow side by side; the other rises above the ground of facts and
permits
his imagination so lofty a flight that it sees everything in the
distorted
perspective of the bird's-eye view, and finds itself compelled to
interpret
Hellenic art as a symptom of decadence, and to praise the brigand age
of
the hypothetical aboriginal Aryan as the noblest activity of humanity!
The notion “humanity“ is, to begin with, nothing more than a linguistic
makeshift, a collectivum, by which the characteristic feature
of
the man, his personality, is
207 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
blurred, and the
guiding thread of history — the different individualities of peoples
and
nations — is rendered invisible. I admit that the notion humanity can
acquire
a positive purport, but only on condition that the concrete facts of
the
separated race-individualities are taken as a foundation upon which to
build; these are then classified into more general racial ideas, which
are again sifted in a similar fashion, and what after this hovers in
the
clouds high above the world of reality, scarcely visible to the naked
eye,
is “humanity.“ This humanity, however, we shall never take as our
starting-point
in judging that which is human; for every action on earth originates
from
definite, not from indefinite man; nor shall we ever take it as our
goal,
for individual limitation precludes the possibility of a universally
valid
generalisation. Even Zoroaster uttered the wise words: “Neither in
thoughts,
nor desires, nor words, nor deeds, nor religion, nor intellectual
capacity
do men resemble one another; he who loves the light should have his
place
among the resplendent heavenly bodies, he who loves the darkness
belongs
to the powers of night.“ *
I have been forcedly theorising in spite of myself. For a theory — the
theory of the essentially one and uniform humanity † — stands in the
way
of all correct insight into the history of our time and of all times,
and
yet it has so thoroughly entered into our flesh and blood that it must,
like a weed, be laboriously rooted out, before we can utter the plain
truth
with the hope of being understood. Our present civilisation and culture
are specifically Teutonic, they are exclusively the work of
* See the book of Zâd-Sparam xxi. 20 (contained
in
vol. 47 of the Sacred Books of the East).
† This theory is old; Seneca, for example, has a liking for referring
to
the ideal of humanity, of which individual men are, so to speak, more
or
less successful copies: “Homines quidem pereunt, ipsa autem
humanitas,
ad quam homo effingitur, permanet“ (Letter 65 to Lucilius.)
208 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
Teutonism. And
yet this is the great central and primal truth, the “concrete fact,“
which
the history of the last thousand years teaches us in every page. The
Teuton
was stimulated from all sides, but he assimilated these suggestions and
transformed them into something of his own. Thus the impulse to
manufacture
paper came from China, but it was to the Teuton alone that this
immediately
suggested the idea of book-printing; * the study of antiquity and the
excavation
of old works of plastic art gave a start to artistic activity in Italy,
but even sculpture departed from the first Hellenic tradition, by
making
its aim not the Characteristic but the Typical, the Individual, not the
Allegorical; Architecture only borrowed certain details, Painting
nothing
at all from Classical antiquity. I give these merely as examples, for
in
all provinces the procedure of the Teuton was similar. Even Roman Law
was
at no time and in no place fully adopted. As a matter of fact by
certain
races, notably the Anglo-Saxons, who blossomed forth into such
greatness
— it was continually and deliberately rejected in spite of all regal
and
Papal intrigues. Whatever un-Teutonic forces came into play acted — as
we saw in the case of Italy at the beginning of this chapter —
principally
as hindrance, as destruction, as a seduction from the course imposed by
necessity upon this special type of mankind. On the other hand, where
the
Teutons by force of numbers or by purer blood predominated, all alien
elements
were carried with the current and even the non-Teuton had to become a
Teuton
in order to be and to pass for something.
Naturally one cannot take the word Teuton in the usual narrow sense;
such
a distinction is contrary to fact and makes history as obscure as if we
looked at it through a cracked glass; on the other hand, if we have
recognised
the obvious original similarity of the peoples that have arisen from
Northern
Europe, and discovered that their
* Cf. below, division 3,
on
“Industry.“
209 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
diverse
individuality
is due to the incomparable plasticity which is still a feature of the
race,
to the tendency of Teutonism towards ceaseless individualisation, we at
once understand that what is at the present day called European culture
is not in truth European, but specifically Teutonic. In the Rome of
to-day
we have seen that we are only partially in the atmosphere of this
culture;
the whole south of Europe, from which, unfortunately, the Chaos of
Peoples
was never rooted out, and where, as a consequence of the laws fully
considered
in chapter iv. (vol. i.) it is
rapidly
gathering strength again, simply swims against its will with the
current;
it cannot resist the power of our civilisation, but inwardly it
scarcely
any longer belongs to it. If we travel towards the east, we cross the
boundary
at a distance of about twenty-four hours' railway journey from Vienna;
from there straight across to the Pacific Ocean not an inch of land is
influenced by our culture. To the north of this line nothing but
railways,
telegraph posts and Cossack patrols testify to the fact that a purely
Teutonic
monarch, at the head of a people, the vigorous, creative elements of
which
are at least half-Teutons, has begun to stretch the hand of order over
this gigantic district; but even this hand reaches only to the point
where
a civilisation entirely antagonistic to our own sets in, that of the
Chinese,
Japanese, Tonkinese, &c. Élisée Reclus, the
famous
geographer, assured me, just after he had finished the study of all the
literature in China for his Géographie Universelle, that
not a single European — not even those who, like Richthofen and Harte,
had lived there for many years, no missionary who had spent all his
life
in the heart of the country — could say of himself, “J'ai connu un
Chinois.“
The personality of the Chinese is, in fact, impenetrable to us, just as
ours is to him; a sportsman understands by sympathy more of the soul of
his dog, and the dog more of his master's soul, than the master knows
of
the soul of the Chinaman with whom he goes shooting.
210 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
All the silly
talk about “humanity“ does not help us over the difficulty raised by
this
prosaically certain fact. He, on the other hand, who crosses the broad
ocean to the United States finds among new faces, with a national
character
that has acquired a new individuality, his own culture, and that, too,
in a high stage of development, and it is the same with the man who,
after
travelling for four weeks, lands on the coast of Australia. New York
and
Melbourne are incomparably more “European“ than the Seville or Athens
of
to-day — not in appearance, but in the spirit of enterprise, in
capacity
for achievement, in intellectual tendency, in art and science, in the
general
moral level, in short, in strength of life. This strength is the
precious
legacy of our fathers; once it was possessed by the Hellenes, once by
the
Romans.
It is only by thus recognising the strictly individual character of our
culture and civilisation that we can judge ourselves aright, ourselves
and others. For the essence of individuality is limitation and the
possession
of a physiognomy of one's own; the “prodomus“ of all historical insight
is therefore — as Schiller beautifully expresses it — “to learn to
grasp
with faithful and chaste sense the individuality of things.“ One
culture
can destroy, but never permeate, the other. If we begin our works on
history
with Egypt — or, according to the most recent discoveries, with
Babylonia
— and then let mankind develop chronologically, we build up an
altogether
artificial structure. Egyptian culture, for example, is an altogether
isolated,
individual thing, about which we are no more able to form an estimate
than
about an ant-state, and all ethnographers assure us that the Fellahin
of
the Nile Valley to-day are physically and mentally identical with those
of five thousand years ago; new races became masters of the land and
brought
a new culture with them; no development took place. And what are we, in
the meantime, to do with the mighty culture of the Indo-Aryans? Is it
not
to be taken
211 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
into account?
But how is it to be placed among the others? For their finest epoch
fell
about the time when our Teutonic culture just started on its course. Do
we find that in India that high culture has been further developed? And
what about the Chinese, to whom we are perhaps indebted for as much
stimulus
as the Hellenes were to the Egyptians? The truth is, that as soon as
we,
following our propensity to systematise, try to produce an organic
unity,
we destroy the individual and with it the one thing which we concretely
possess. Even Herder, from whom I differ so widely in this very
discussion,
writes: “In India, Egypt, China, also in Canaan, Greece, Rome,
Carthage,
there took place what never and nowhere will happen in the world
again.“
*
THE
SO-CALLED RENAISSANCE
I said above, for example, that it was the Hellenes and the Romans who
certainly gave the greatest impulse, if not to our civilisation, at
least
to our culture; but we have not thereby become either Hellenes or
Romans.
Perhaps no more fatal conception has been introduced into history than
that of the Renaissance. For we have associated with it the delusion of
a regeneration of Latin and Greek culture, a thought worthy of the
half-bred
souls of degenerate Southern Europe, to whom culture was something
which
man can outwardly assimilate. For a rinascimento of Hellenic
culture,
nothing less would be necessary than the rebirth of the Hellenes; all
else
is mummery. Not only was the idea of the Renaissance in itself a
misfortune,
but also to a great extent the deeds that sprang from this idea. For
instead
of receiving only a stimulus, we henceforth received laws, laws which
put
fetters upon our own individuality, obstructed it at every step and had
for their object the degradation of the most
* Ideen iii. 12. 6.
212 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
valuable thing
which we possess, our originality, that is to say, the sincerity of our
own nature. Roman Law, which was proclaimed as a classical dogma,
became
in the sphere of public life the source of shocking violence and loss
of
freedom. I do not mean to say that this law is not, even at the present
day, a model of juristical technique, the eternal high school of
jurisprudence
(see vol. i. p. 148 f.);
but the fact that it was forced upon us Teutons as a dogma was
obviously
a great misfortune for our historical development; for not only did it
not suit our conditions, it was something dead, misunderstood, an
organism
the former living significance of which was only revealed after the
lapse
of centuries in our own days by the most searching study of Roman
History:
before we could really understand what his intellect had constructed,
we
had to call the Roman himself from the grave. The same thing happened
in
every sphere. Not only in philosophy were we to be handmaids (ancillae),
namely, of Aristotle (see vol. ii. p.
178), but the law of slavery was also introduced into the whole
realm
of thought and creative activity. It was only in the industrial and
economic
spheres that vigorous progress was made, for here there was no
classical
dogma to retard; even natural science and the discovery of the world
had
a strenuous conflict to wage — all intellectual sciences, Poetry and
Art
as well, a more strenuous one still — a conflict which has not even yet
been fought out to a perfectly successful issue, which would leave us
absolutely
unfettered. It is certainly not a mere accident that by far the
greatest
poet of the epoch of the so-called Renaissance, Shakespeare, and the
most
powerful sculptor, Michael Angelo, understood none of the ancient
languages;
just consider in what mighty independence a Dante would have stood
before
us, had he not borrowed his hell from Virgil and welded together his
ideals
of State from the spurious law of Constantinople and the Civitas Dei
of Augustine!
213 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
And why was it
that this contact with past cultures, which should have brought unmixed
blessing, became in many ways a curse? It was simply because we did
not,
and alas! do not even yet, comprehend the individuality of every
manifestation
of culture! The Tuscan aesthetes, for example, lauded the Greek tragedy
as the eternal paragon of the drama, and did not perceive that not only
are the conditions of our life very different from those of Attica, but
that our gifts, our whole personality, with its light and shade, are
absolutely
distinct; hence it was that these would-be renewers of Hellenic culture
produced all sorts of monstrosities and crushed the Italian drama in
the
bud. By this they only showed their utter ignorance both of Teutonism
and
of Hellenism. For what we should have learned from Hellenism was the
significance
for life of an art that had developed organically, and the significance
for art of the unimpaired free personality; we took from it the very
opposite,
ready-made mechanical patterns and the despotism of false aesthetics.
For
it is only the conscious, free individual that can rise to the
comprehension
of the incomparableness of other individualities. The bungler fancies
that
every one is capable of all things; he does not understand that
imitation
is the most shameless stupidity. It was from such blundering
misconceptions
that the idea of fastening on to Greece and Rome, and of continuing
their
work, originated — an idea which — as we should be careful to remember
— gives proof of an almost ridiculous under-estimation of the
achievements
of these great nations, while at the same time it shows a complete
failure
to realise our Teutonic strength and individuality.
214 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
PROGRESS
AND DEGENERATION
One other point deserves to be noticed. From the above it is easy for
every
one to observe to what extent it is that that pale abstraction of a
universal
“humanity,“ devoid of physiognomy and character and capable of being
kneaded
into any shape, leads to the under-estimation of the importance of the
individual element in single men and in peoples: this confusion is the
cause of another and even more fatal mistake, the exposure of which
demands
more diligence and acuteness. For it is from this first error of
judgment
that the mutually complementary notions of a progress and a
degeneration
of humanity are derived, and neither of these notions is tenable on the
ground of concrete historical facts. Morally, it is true, the
conception
of progress may be indispensable: it is the application of the divine
gift
of hope to the world at large; similarly the metaphysics of religion
cannot
do without the symbol of degeneration (see p. 31
f.): but in both cases it is a question of inner states of mind
(fundamentally
of transcendent presentiments), which the individual projects upon his
surroundings; when applied to actual history, as though they were
objective
realities, they lead to false judgments and failure to recognise the
most
patent facts. *
* See vol. i. pp. lxxviii.
and xcvi. Immanuel Kant has,
as
usual, hit the nail on the head by rejecting this “good-natured“
presupposition
of the moralists, which the “history of all times too forcibly
contradicts“
(Religion, beginning of chap. i.) and by comparing humanity,
which
is presumed to be progressing, to the sick man who had to call out in
triumph,
“I am dying of sheer improvement!“ (Streit der Fakultäten,
ii.). In another passage he supplements this by writing, “No theory
justifies
man in holding the belief that the world is on the whole steadily
improving;
only purely practical reason may do so, for it dogmatically commands us
to act according to such a hypothesis“ (Über die Fortschritte
der
Metaphysik, 2nd manuscript, Part II.) Thus by the conceptive
progress
we are justified in expressing, not an eternal fact, but the inner goal
in view. If Kant had also emphasised the necessity of decline, instead
of regarding the “clamour about con-
215 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
For
progressive development and progressive decline are phenomena which are
connected with individual life and which can be applied to the general
phenomena of nature only in an allegorical sense, not sensu
proprio.
Every individual person reveals progress and degeneration, every
individual
thing likewise — whatever its nature — the individual race, the
individual
nation, the individual culture; that is the price that must be paid for
the possession of individuality. On the other hand, in the case of
universal
and not individual phenomena, the notions progress and degeneration
have
no meaning, being merely a wrong and roundabout way of expressing
change
and motion. For this reason Schiller describes the common “empirical“
idea
of immortality (according to the teaching of the orthodox Christian
Church)
as a “demand that can only be put forward by an animal nature
striving
to attain to the Absolute.“ * Animal nature is here intended to be in
contrast
to individuality; for the law of individuality, as Goethe has taught us
(see the preceding chapter), is outward limitation, and this
denotes
a limitation not only in space but also in time; whereas the Universal
— which denotes, as here, the animal nature of man, in other words, man
as animal in contrast to man as individual — has no necessary, but at
most
an accidental limitation. But where there is no limitation, one cannot,
in the proper sense of the word, speak of progression forwards or
backwards,
but only of motion. For this reason no tenable notion can be derived
even
from the most consistent, and, therefore,
stantly
progressing degeneration“ as empty talk (Vom Verhältnis der
Theorie
zur Praxis im Völkerrecht), nothing would have remained
obscure,
and from the contradiction of action according to the hypothesis of
progress,
and of faith according to the hypothesis of decline, we should have
seen
clearly that it is something Transcendental, and not empirical history,
that is at work here. — In his simple way Goethe silences a fanatic of
so-called progress with the words, “It is circum-gression we must say“
(Umschreitung müssen wir sagen): Gespräche, i.
182.
* Ästhetische Erziehung, Letter 24.
216 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
most shallow,
Darwinism; for conforming to definite conditions is nothing more than a
manifestation of equilibrium, and so-called evolution from simpler to
more
complicated forms of life may be quite as justifiably considered a
decline
as an advance; * it is in fact neither the one nor the other, but
merely
a manifestation of motion. This, too, is admitted by the philosopher of
Darwinism, Herbert Spencer, in that he regards evolution as a kind of
rhythmic
pulsation, and explains very clearly that the equilibrium is at every
moment
the same. † In fact, it is inconceivable how the systole should form an
“advance“ on the diastole, or the pendulum's movement to the right an
“advance“
on its movement to the left. And yet clever men, carried away by the
current
of prevalent error, would fain have seen in evolution the guarantee,
nay
more, the proof of the reality of progress! What becomes of our logic
when
we cherish such absurdities must, however, be made clear by an example,
for here I am swimming against the stream and must avail myself of
every
advantage.
John Fiske, the deservedly famous author of the history of the
discovery
of America, says in his thoughtful Darwinian work, The Destiny of
Man,
viewed in the light of his origin, ‡ that “the struggle for
existence
has succeeded in bringing forth that consummate product of creative
activity,
the human soul.“ Now in truth I do not know how the struggle can supply
the sole effective cause of anything; this conception of the world's
problems
seems to me a little too summary, like all philosophy
* From the standpoint of consistent materialism the moneron is the most
perfect animal, for it is the simplest and therefore most capable of
resistance,
and it is so organised that it can live in water, that is, on the
greatest
portion of the surface of our planet.
† See the chapter on “The Rhythm of Motion“ and the first two
chapters
on “Evolution“ in his First Principles.
‡ Boston, 1884. Such are our modern empiricists! They know the “origin“
and the “destiny“ of all things and may therefore well deem themselves
wise. The Pope in Rome is more modest.
217 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
of evolution;
but the struggle so manifestly steels existing powers, draws out
physical
and mental gifts and develops them by exercise (even old Homer teaches
our children this lesson), that I will not dispute the fact at present.
Fiske goes on to say: “It is the wholesale destruction of life, which
has
heretofore characterised evolution ever since life began, through which
the higher forms of organic existence have been produced“ (p. 95 f);
very
well, we will admit it. But what about progress? Logically we should
presuppose
that it consisted in increase of wholesale murder, or was at least
dependent
upon it — a view which could reasonably be advanced on the strength of
some phenomena of our time. But this is very wide of the mark! Fiske
has
a great advantage over such homely logic, for he knows not only the
“origin“
but also the “destiny“ of man. He informs us that, “as evolution
advances,
the struggle for existence ceases to be a determining factor ... this
elimination
of strife is a fact of utterly unparalleled grandeur; words cannot do
justice
to such a fact.“ This celestial peace is now the goal of progress,
indeed
it is progress itself. For Fiske, who is a very clever man, feels
rightly
that nobody has hitherto known the meaning of this talismanic word
“progress“
— now we do know. “At length,“ says Fiske, “at length we see what human
progress means.“ I am afraid I must beg to differ. For what is to
become
of our soul, which we acquired with such honest pains? We were just
informed
that the struggle for existence had “produced“ the soul: will it
henceforth
arise without a cause? And even supposing that the hobby-horse of
heredity
should kindly take it upon its Centaur back and carry it a stage
farther,
would the sensation of the struggle not lead, according to orthodox
Darwinism,
to the degeneration of the object produced, * so that our soul, as a
mere
* Origin c. xiv.; Animals and Plants c. xxiv.
218 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
“rudimentary
organ“
(comparable to the well-known human tail-appendage) might be, in its
uselessness,
merely an object of wonder to the would-be Admirable Crichton of future
days. And why, if the struggle has already produced something so
splendid,
should it now cease? Surely not from sickly, sentimental horror of
bloodshed.
“Death in battle,“ said Corporal Trim, and thereby he snapped his
fingers
— “death in battle I do not fear this much! but elsewhere I should hide
from it in every crevice.“ And though it is, under Professor Fiske's
guidance,
a “joy to see how we have at last gained such glorious heights,“ yet I
can imagine and hope for something much more glorious still than what
the
present offers, and I shall never admit that the cessation of the
struggle
would mean an advance; it is just here that the hypothesis of evolution
has accidentally got hold of a truth — the importance of the struggle
for
existence; it would really be foolish to sacrifice it, merely in order
to “see what human progress means.“
This error is due, as I have already said, to failure to realise a very
simple and essential philosophical fact, that Progress and Degeneration
can only be applied to the Individual, never to the Universal. To be
able
to speak of a progress of humanity, we should require to view the whole
revelation of man upon earth from such a distance that everything,
which
for us constitutes history, would disappear; perhaps it would then be
possible
to conceive humanity as an individual phenomenon, to compare it with
other
analogous phenomena — e.g., upon other planets — and to observe
it in progress and decline: but such hypothetical star-gazing has no
practical
value for us or for our time. The desire to bring our Teutonic culture
into organic connection with the Hellenic as an advance or a decline is
scarcely more reasonable than Buckle's already mentioned comparison
219 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
of dates and rice;
indeed, it is less sensible, for dates and rice are recognised to be
essentially
different, to be something universal and unchangeable; whereas in the
other
comparison we overlook what differentiates and do not reflect that the
Individual is something Never-recurring, and for that reason Complete
and
Absolute. Can we assert that Michael Angelo is an advance on Phidias,
Shakespeare
on Sophokles? or that they represent a falling off? Does any one
believe
that any trace of sense is to be derived from such a statement?
Certainly
not. But the point which people do not grasp is this, that the same
holds
good with regard to the collective national individualities and
manifestations
of culture, to which these remarkable men gave extraordinarily vivid
expression.
And so we go on making comparisons: the great gaping herd believes as
firmly
in the constant “progress of humanity“ as a nun in the Immaculate
Conception;
the greater and more thoughtful spirits — from Hesiod to Schiller, from
the symbolism of the aboriginal Babylonians to Arthur Schopenhauer —
have
at all times rather had a presentiment of decline. If applied to
history,
both ideas are untenable. We have but to cross the border of
civilisation
to feel at once, from the load that falls from our head and shoulders,
from the delight that is everywhere so obvious, how dearly we pay for
so-called
progress, Methinks a Macedonian shepherd of to-day leads a no less
useful
and much worthier and happier life than a factory worker in
Chaux-de-Fonds,
who from his tenth year to the day of his death, for fourteen hours a
day,
mechanically fashions some one particular wheel for watches. Now if the
ingenuity which leads to the invention and perfection of the watch robs
its maker of the sight of the great time-measurer, the great giver of
life
and health, the sun, it is obvious that this advance, however wonderful
it may be, is bought at the price of a
220 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
corresponding
retrogression. The same holds good everywhere. To save the notion of
progress,
it has been compared to a “circular motion in which the radius grows
longer.“
* But this robs the idea of all meaning; for every circle is in all
essential
qualities the same as every other, greater or smaller extent cannot
possibly
be regarded as greater or lesser perfection. But the opposite idea —
that
of a degeneration of man — is just as untenable, as soon as we apply it
to concrete history. Thus, for example, the remark of Schiller, which I
quoted in the general introduction to this book, “What single man of
recent
times stands forth, man against man, to contend with the individual
Athenian
for the prize of humanity?“ can only claim a very limited validity.
Every
student of Schiller knows what the noble poet means; in what sense he
is
right, I have myself attempted to indicate; † and yet the statement
provokes
downright contradiction, indeed manifold contradiction. What is this
“prize
of humanity“? Once more it is that abstract idea of humanity which
confuses
the judgment! Among the free citizens of Athens (and Schiller can only
mean these) there were twenty slaves to every man: in such
circumstances,
to be sure, leisure could be found for physical culture, the study of
philosophy
and the practice of art; our Teutonic culture, on the other hand (like
the Chinese — for in such things it is not progress but innate
character
that reveals itself), was from the first an enemy of slavery; again and
again this perfectly natural relationship sets in and ever and again we
cast it off with horror. How many are there among us — from the King to
the organ-grinder — who are not constrained to do their very best the
livelong
day, by the sweat of their brows? But is not work in itself at least as
ennobling as bathing and boxing? ‡
* So Justus Liebig: Reden und Abhandlungen, 1874, p. 273, and
others.
† Vol. i. p. xcviii. and
pp.
33
to 40.
‡ Apart from the fact that the performances of modern athletes, as
221 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
I should not have
long to search for “the single man of recent times“ whom Schiller
challenges:
I should take Friedrich Schiller himself by the hand and place him in
the
midst of the greatest Greeks of all ages: stripped in the gymnasium the
ever-ailing poet would certainly cut a poor figure, but his heart and
intellect,
the more they were freed from the worry of the conditions of life,
would
rise in all the greater sublimity; and without fear of contradiction I
would boldly assert: this single modern man is superior to you all by
his
knowledge, his striving, his ethical ideal; as a thinker he is far
above
you, and as a poet almost of equal rank with you. What Hellenic artist,
I ask, can be called Richard Wagner's equal in creative force and power
of expression? And where did all Hellenism produce a man worthy to
contend
with a Goethe for the prize of humanity? There we come upon a further
contradiction,
which is provoked by Schiller's assertion. For if our poets are not in
every respect equal to the greatest poets of Athens, that is not the
fault
of their talent, but of those who surround them, who do not understand
the value of art; but Schiller supports the view that while we as
individuals
cannot rival the Greeks, our culture as a whole is superior to theirs.
A decided mistake, behind which the phantom “humanity“ again lurks. For
though an absolute comparison between two peoples is (at least in my
opinion)
inadmissible, no objection can be offered to drawing a parallel between
the individual stages of development; and if we do this, we shall
perceive
that the Hellenes, in spite of the painful defects of their
individuality,
stand on an altitude of supreme eminence and reveal a peculiar harmony
of greatness, from which their culture derives its incomparable charm,
whereas we Teutons are still in process of development,
self-contradictory,
uncertain of
it
has been proved, are superior to those of the ancients. (Cf.
especially
the various works of Hueppe.)
222 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
ourselves,
surrounded
and at many points saturated to the core by incongruous elements, which
tear down what we construct and estrange us from our own true nature.
In
Greece a national individuality had after a stern struggle fought its
way
to the daylight; in our case all is still ferment; the highest
manifestations
of our intellectual life stand side by side isolated, regarding each
other
with almost hostile eyes, and it will only be after hard work that we
shall
succeed as a united whole in reaching that stage upon which Hellenic,
Roman,
Indian and Egyptian cultures once stood.
HISTORICAL
CRITERION
If we then free ourselves from the delusion of a progressive or
retrogressive
humanity, and content ourselves with the realisation of the fact that
our
culture is specifically North-European, i.e., Teutonic, we
shall
at once gain a sure standard by which to judge our own past and our
present,
and at the same time a very useful standard to apply to a future which
has yet to come. For nothing Individual is limitless. So long as we
regard
ourselves as the responsible representatives of all humanity, the more
clear-seeing minds must be driven to despair by our poverty and obvious
incapacity to pave the way for a golden age; at the same time, however,
all shallow-brained phrase-makers turn us from those earnest aims which
we might attain, and undermine what I should like to call historical
morality,
in that, shutting their eyes, blind to our universal limitation, and
totally
failing to realise the value of our specific talents, they dangle
before
our eyes the Impossible, the Absolute: natural rights, eternal peace,
universal
brotherhood, mutual fusion, &c. But if we know that we Northern
Europeans
are a definite individuality, responsible, not for humanity, but
certainly
for our own personality, we shall love and value
223 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
our work as
something
individual, we shall recognise the fact that it is by no means
complete,
but still very defective, and, above all, far from being sufficiently
independent;
no vision of an “absolute“ perfection will mislead us, but we shall, as
Shakespeare wished, remain true to ourselves, and be satisfied with
doing
our very best within the limits of the Teuton's power of achievement;
we
shall deliberately defend ourselves against the un-Teutonic, and seek
not
only to extend our empire farther and farther over the surface of the
globe
and over the powers of nature, but above all unconditionally to subject
the inner world to ourselves by mercilessly overthrowing and excluding
those who are alien to us, and who, nevertheless, would fain gain the
mastery
over our thought. It is often said that politics can know no scruples;
nothing at all can know scruples; scruples are a crime against self.
Scruple
is the soldier who in the battle takes to his heels, presenting his
back
as a target to the enemy. The most sacred duty of the Teuton is to
serve
the Teutonic cause. This fact supplies us with an historical standard
of
measurement. In all spheres that man and that deed will be glorified as
greatest and most important which most successfully advance specific
Teutonism
or have most vigorously supported its supremacy. Thus and thus only do
we acquire a limiting, organising, absolutely positive principle of
judgment.
To refer to a well-known instance; why is it that, in spite of the
admiration
which his genius inspires, the personality of the great Byron has
something
repulsive in it for every thorough Teuton? Treitschke has answered this
question in his brilliant essay on Byron: it is “because nowhere in
this
rich life do we encounter the idea of duty.“ That is an unsympathetic,
un-Teutonic feature. On the other hand, we do not object in the least
to
his love-affairs; in them we rather see a proof of genuine race; and we
observe with satisfaction that Byron — in contrast to Virgil, Juvenal,
224 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
Lucian and their
modern imitators — was in truth licentious, but not frivolous. Towards
women he is gallant. This we welcome as Teutonic. In politics also this
point of view will prove valid. We shall praise, for example, princes,
when they oppose the claims of Rome — not because we are carried away
by
any dogmatically religious prejudice, but because we see in every
rejection
of international imperialism a furtherance of Teutonism; we shall blame
them when they proceed to regard themselves as absolute rulers
appointed
by the grace of God, for by this they reveal themselves as plagiarists
of the wretched Chaos of Peoples, and destroy the old Teutonic law of
freedom,
thus fettering at the same time the best powers of the people. In many
cases, it is true, the situation is a very complicated one, but there,
too, the same ruling principle clears everything up. Thus, for example,
Louis XIV. by his shameful persecution of the Protestants brought about
the subsequent decline of France. This was an act of incalculably
far-reaching
consequence for the anti-Teutonic cause, and he accomplished it in his
capacity as a pupil of the Jesuits, who had brought him up in such
crass
ignorance that he could not even write his own language correctly, and
knew nothing of history. * And yet this ruler proved himself in many
respects
a thorough Teuton; for example, in his courageous defence of the
distinct
rights and fundamental independence of the Gallican Church in
opposition
to the arrogant claims of Rome — there has seldom, I think, been a
Catholic
King who on every occasion paid so little regard to the person of the
Pope;
and another proof is his great organising activity. † One might also
cite
Frederick the Great of
* Cf. Letter xv. in the correspondence between Voltaire and
Frederick
the Great.
† It always gives me satisfaction to read again Buckle's philippics
against
Louis XIV. (Civilisation ii. 4) but Voltaire (to whom Buckle
refers)
gives a much fairer picture in his Siècle de Louis XIV. (See
especially chap. xxix: on the King's power of work, his knowledge of
men
and organising ability).
225 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
Prussia, who could
not safeguard the interests of all Teutonism in Central Europe except
as
an absolutely autocratic military leader and statesman, but withal was
so thoroughly liberal in his sentiments that many an advocate of the
French
Revolution might well have taken a lesson from this monarch. At the
same
time another political example of the value of this cardinal principle
occurs to me: he who regards the development and prosperity of
Teutonism
as the decisive criterion will not be long in doubt which document
deserves
most admiration, the Déclaration des droits de l'homme
or
the Declaration of Independence of the United States of North
America.
I shall return to this point again. In other spheres than that of
politics
the conception of the individual nature of the Teutonic spirit proves
equally
valid. The daring exploration of the earth not only gave new scope for
a spirit of enterprise such as no other race ever possessed or yet
possesses,
but also cleared our minds of the close atmosphere of the Classical
libraries
and restored them to themselves; when Copernicus tore down the
firmament
of Heaven that had hemmed us in, and with it the Heaven of the
Egyptians
which had passed over into Christianity, immediately the Heaven of the
Teuton stood revealed: “men have at all times and in all places thought
that the heavens were many hundreds of thousands of miles from this
earth
... but the true Heaven is everywhere, even in the place where you
stand
and walk.“ * Printing was used first of all to disseminate the Gospel
and
to oppose the anti-Teutonic theocracy. And so on, ad infinitum.
INNER
CONTRASTS
There is yet a word to be said, and one of great importance, if we
would
clearly recognise and distinguish what is thoroughly Teutonic. In the
matters
which I have
* Jacob Böhme: Aurora 19.
226
THE TEUTONS AS CREATORS
OF A NEW CULTURE
just mentioned,
as in a thousand others, we discover everywhere that specific
characteristic
of the Teuton, the close association — as though they were twin
brothers,
walking hand in hand — of the Practical and the Ideal (see vol.
i. p. 550.)
At
all points we shall encounter similar contradictions in the Teuton, and
shall learn to value them equally highly. For when we realise that we
have
to deal with something individual, we shall, in forming our judgment,
refrain
above all from taking into consideration the logical notions of
abstract
theories about Good and Evil, Higher and Lower, and direct our
attention
simply to the individuality; but an individuality is always best
recognised
from its inner contrasts; where it is uniform, it is also without
shape,
without individuality. Thus, for example, the Teutons are characterised
by a power of expansion possessed by no race before them, and at the
same
time by an inclination to concentration which is equally new. We see
the
expansive power at work — in the practical sphere, in the gradual
colonisation
of the whole surface of the globe; — in the scientific sphere, in the
revelation
of the infinite Cosmos, in the search for ever remoter causes; — in the
ideal sphere, in the conception of the Transcendent, in the boldness of
hypotheses, and in sublime artistic flights which lead to more and more
comprehensive means of expression. At the same time, however, we are
inclined
to return within more and more narrowly circumscribed limits, carefully
cut off from everything external by ramparts and trenches; we return to
the idea of blood-relationships of the Fatherland, of the native
district,
* of the village of our birth, of the inviolable home (my home is my
castle, as in Rome), of the closest family circle; finally we
return
to the innermost central point of the individual, who now, purified and
elevated to consciousness of absolute isolation, faces the outer world
as an
* Beautifully described by Jacob Grimm in his Memoirs, where he
tells how the inhabitants of Hessen-Nassau “look down with a kind of
contempt“
upon those of Hessen-Darmstadt.
227 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
invisible,
independent
being, a supreme lord of freedom, as was the case with the Indians;
this
is that concentration which in other spheres reveals itself as division
of countries into small Principalities, as limitation to a special
“field,“
whether in science or industry, as inclination to form sects and
schools
as in Greece, as poetical effects of the innermost nature, e.g.,
the woodcut, engraving, chamber music. In character these contrasted
qualities
which are held in coherence by the higher individuality of the race,
signify
a spirit of enterprise allied to conscientiousness, or they lead — if
misguided
— to speculation (on the Stock Exchange or in philosophy, it is all the
same), to narrow-minded pedantry and pusillanimity.
I cannot on this occasion be expected to attempt an exhaustive
description
of Teutonic individuality; everything individual — however manifest and
recognisable beyond all doubt it may be — is inexhaustible. As Goethe
says,
“Words cannot clearly reveal the Best,“ and if personality is the
highest
gift which we children of earth receive, then truly the individuality
of
our definite race is one of those “best“ things. It alone carries along
all separate personalities, as the ship is borne by the flood, and
without
it (or when this flood is too shallow easily to float anything great)
even
the strongest character must lie helpless and impotent, like a barque
stranded
and capsized. Already in the sixth chapter, with a view to stimulate
interest,
I have mentioned some characteristics of the Teuton; in the second part
of this chapter many others will reveal themselves, but here, too, my
sole
object will be to stimulate, to impel the reader to open his eyes and
see
for himself.
228
THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
THE
TEUTONIC WORLD
It is the clear realisation of what the Teutons have achieved that will
prove instructive. This is, I think, the task that remains for me to
accomplish
in this chapter. To discuss the gradual “Rise of a New World“ means,
for
me, to describe the gradual rise of the Teutonic world. But the most
important
portion of the task has, in my opinion, been already accomplished by
the
enunciation and verification of this great central proposition that the
new world is a specifically Teutonic world. In fact, I consider that
this
view is so important and so decisive for all comprehension of the Past,
the Present and the Future, that I shall once more for the last time
summarise
the facts.
The civilisation and culture, which, radiating from Northern Europe,
to-day
dominate (though in very varying degrees) a considerable part of the
world,
are the work of Teutonism; what is not Teutonic consists either of
alien
elements not yet exorcised, which were formerly forcibly introduced and
still, like baneful germs, circulate in the blood, or of alien wares
sailing,
to the disadvantage of our work and further development, under the
Teutonic
flag, under Teutonic protection and privilege, and they will continue
to
sail thus, until we send these pirate ships to the bottom. This work of
Teutonism is beyond question the greatest that has hitherto been
accomplished
by man. It was achieved, not by the delusion of a “humanity,“ but by
sound,
selfish power, not by belief in authority, but by free investigation,
not
by contentedness with little, but by insatiable ravenous hunger. As the
youngest of races, we Teutons could profit by the achievements of
former
ones; but this is no proof of a universal progress of humanity, but
solely
of the pre-eminent capabilities of a definite human species,
capabilities
which
229 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
have been proved
to be gradually weakened by influx of non-Teutonic blood, or even (as
in
Austria) of anti-Teutonic principles. No one can prove that the
predominance
of Teutonism is a fortunate thing for all the inhabitants of the earth;
from the earliest times down to the present day we see the Teutons, to
make room for themselves, slaughtering whole tribes and races, or
slowly
killing them by systematic demoralisation. That the Teutons with their
virtues alone and without their vices — such as greed, cruelty,
treachery,
disregarding of all rights but their own right to rule (vol. i. p.
541), &c. — would have won the victory, no one will have the
audacity
to assert, but every one must admit that in the very places where they
were most cruel — as, for instance, the Anglo-Saxons in England, the
German
Order in Prussia, the French and English in North America — they laid
by
this very means the surest foundation of what is highest and most moral.
Armed with this various store of knowledge, all flowing from one
central
fact, we are now, I think, in a position, with understanding and
without
prejudice, to regard the work of the Teutons, and to observe how, from
about the twelfth century, when it began to assume definite form as
isolated
endeavour, it has gone on developing to the present day with unflagging
zeal; we may even hope, by the irrefutability of our standpoint, to be
able to some extent to surmount our greatest disadvantage, namely, the
fact that we are still in the midst of a development of which we
consequently
only see a fragment. But my work keeps the nineteenth century alone in
view. God willing, I shall at some later time not indeed describe this
century in full detail, but examine and test with some thoroughness its
collective achievement; in the meantime I am seeking in this book to
discover
in their essential outlines the Foundations of the achievements and
aspirations
of our nineteenth century. That and nothing more. I cannot possibly
think
of sketching, even in outline, the
230 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
history of the
culture of Celts, Teutons and Slavs up to the eighteenth century, any
more
than it occurred to me to attempt to give an historical account, when I
was discussing the struggle in religion and in the State during the
first
thousand years of our era. It is outside the plan of my book, and
beyond
my competence. I might, therefore, almost close this volume, now that I
have clearly established the most essential of all the foundations,
Teutonism.
I should do so if I knew a book to which I might refer my friend and
colleague,
the unlearned reader, for information regarding the development of
Teutonism
up to the year 1800, planned as I would have it — comprehensive and yet
absolutely individualised. But I know none. It is obvious that a
political
history does not suffice; that would be like a physiologist contenting
himself with the knowledge of osteology. Still less suitable for the
purpose
in question are the histories of culture that have lately come into
vogue,
in which poets and thinkers are represented as leaders, while political
creative work is almost totally disregarded; that is like describing a
body without paying any attention to the fundamental bone-structure.
And
the books of this kind that are to be taken seriously treat mostly only
of definite periods, as Karl Grün's 16. und 17. Jahrhundert,
Burckhardt's Renaissance, Voltaire's Siècle de Louis
XIV.,
&c., or limited spheres, like Buckle's Civilisation in England
(really in Spain, Scotland and France), Rambaud's Civilisation
Française,
Henne am Rhyn's Kulturgeschichte der Juden, &c., or again,
special
domains of culture, like Draper's Intellectual Development of
Europe,
or Lecky's Rationalism in Europe, &c. The literature on
this
subject is very extensive, but among it all I find no work which
represents
the development of collective Teutonism as that of a living, individual
entity, in which all manifestations of life — politics, religion,
economics,
industry, arts, &c. — are organically connected. Karl Lamprecht's
comprehensively
231 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
planned German
History would come nearest to what I desire, but it is
unfortunately
only a “German“ History, and treats therefore only of a fragment of
Teutonic
life. It is just in the case of such a work that we see how fatal is
the
failure to distinguish between Teutonic and German; it confuses
everything.
For when only the Germans are regarded as the direct heirs of the
Teutons,
we conceal the fact that the non-German north of Europe is almost pure
Teutonic in the narrowest sense of the word, and fail to observe that
it
was precisely in Germany, the centre of Europe, that the fusion of the
three branches — Celts, Teutons and Slavs — took place, a fact which
explains
the distinct national colour and the richness of the gifts of this
people;
moreover, we lose sight of the predominantly Teutonic character of
France
prior to the Revolution, and also of the organic explanation of the
manifest
affinity that was to be found in former centuries between the character
and achievements of Spain and Italy and those of the north. Both the
Past
and the Present thereby become a riddle. And as we do not get a
universal
view of the great connection, we gain no thorough insight into the life
of all those details which Lamprecht sets before us with such love and
insight. Many think that his treatment is too comprehensive, and
therefore
difficult to understand; but it is, on the contrary, the narrowness of
the point of view that hinders comprehension; for it would be easier to
describe the development of collective Teutonism than that of one
fragment
of it. We Teutons have certainly, in the course of time, developed into
national individualities marked by absolutely distinct characteristics;
moreover, we are surrounded by various half-brothers, but we form a
unity
of such strong coherence, each part of which is so absolutely essential
to the other, that even the political development of the one country
exercises
an influence on all the others and is in turn influenced by them, but
its
civilisation and culture can in
232 THE
TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW
CULTURE
no way be
described
as something isolated and autonomous. There is a Chinese civilisation,
but there is no such thing as a French or a German civilisation; for
that
reason their history cannot be written.
Here then is a gap to be filled up. And as I can neither close my
discussion
of the Foundations of the Nineteenth Century with a yawning gulf, nor
presume
to be competent to fill in so deep a chasm, I shall now attempt to
throw
a light, bold bridge — a makeshift bridge — over it. The material has
been
collected long ago by the most eminent scholars; I shall not attempt to
murder their methods, but shall refer the student to their works for
information;
here we require only the quintessence of the thoughts which can be
derived
from the historical materials, and that only in so far as they are
directly
connected with the present age. The indispensability of a connection
between
the point reached in the preceding chapters and the Nineteenth Century
may excuse my boldness; the necessity for taking into account the
possible
compass of a two-volumed work, and the natural presto-tempo of
a
finale must account for the want of substantiality in my makeshift
structure.
Last
update:
March 28th, 2004
