religion is undermined. . . . There is nothing left but industrialism and money.' And one remembers how Treitschke, in 1895, drawing towards his end, and regarded askance by the Emperor because of certain veiled criticisms, publicly deplored the fact that:

'Everything is becoming more barbarous in morals, politics, and life. . . . Much that one thought of as associated only with the Roman Empire of the Decline is in reality brought about, in our midst, by that intensive culture of large cities which, in turn, besets us One would say that the crash of arms has caused to spring up a new race of Boeotians, and is about to stifle all intelligence of the arts and sciences.'

Quite apart from the manifestations of German Idealism in action, of which we now hear day by day, it is worth while for a moment to consider this 'Culture,' so vaunted and flaunted before us. Nations, and national cultures, are interdependent. Kant (with Scotch blood in his veins) is unthinkable without Locke, Berkeley, Hume; Fichte without Berkeley; Schelling and Hegel without Spinoza, the neo-Platonists of Alexandria, and Brahminism; Schopenhauer without Buddhism: Nietzsche without Hobbes and Gobineau. There is full acknowledgment how vast is the debt of German literature, in its onward stages, to Shakespeare and Rousseau; to Scott and Byron; to Dickens. For the last forty years, German literature, assimilating Ibsen, Tolstoy, Maeterlinck, Guy de Maupassant, Walt Whitman, Wilde and Shaw, is in no way superior to, or even equally important with, the literatures of neighbouring countries. Hauptmann, its most conspicuous figure, is Slav in his inspiration. For German art, fully worthy of the name, we still have to look backward to Dürer and Holbein. Even in music, the classical period, from Bach to Brahms, has seemingly reached its close; Wagner and Richard Strauss are of the Titanic and florid period that so often heralds the decay of an art; the most interesting works of the immediate present are Russian; while the savants are laborious, methodical, and cosmopolitan, as they have ever been.

Without being conquered, the world is fully able to appreciate German thought and art. But are these 'Culture'? Houston Stewart Chamberlain, son-in-law

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of Wagner, and Viennese by adoption, fervent in the praise of things German, draws a distinction between culture and civilisation. 'There is a Chinese civilisation, but not a French or a German.' Nietzsche maintained that, as far as Germany extends, it stifles culture.' In a pamphlet, proceeding on the lines laid down by Chamberlain, a copy of which is said to have been presented by the Emperor to Mr Roosevelt-a pamphlet in which the Emperor himself is exhibited much as a Messiah of the German Spirit-it is pointed out that it is England, and not Germany, that possesses the most definite form of culture, expressed not only in its politics and artistic movement, but still more characteristically in its methods of education, its sports, stock-breeding, domestic architecture, furniture, in brief the framework of its daily life. Whereas German culture is still to be inaugurated, is a matter of the future. And meanwhile, the anonymous author urged, let the nation aid the Emperor in creating an invincible navy. It is only because of the mediocrity of Teutonic taste,' that Germany neglects its duty. The one thing needful is an enormous increase of armed force, and the things of the soul shall be added to this force.

Although the sceptical elements in Kant's philosophy have allowed a not very conspicuous body of neoKantians to reinvestigate the problem of consciousness, German transcendental Idealism, in the land of its birth, is relegated to past history, and has no present influence. Scots and English may still examine the sounder portions of Hegel's system; but in Germany nothing remains of it but the historical fatalism that sees in material success the triumph of reason and progress, and the teaching that the hour of the third human period has struck, the hour of Germany. The radical wing of the Hegelians ended the movement, by logically developing it. D. F. Strauss saw in Christianity a myth, a creation of that human spirit in which the divine becomes conscious of itself. And Feuerbach, taking the last step, assured the Germans that man is incapable of knowing anything higher and better than himself; that it is open to him to think as he may, and fashion ideals, if he must, according to his own devices.

Thus was the German house of the spirit left empty, swept, and garnished for new-comers. Crude Materialism, a reaction against the previous Idealism, for a time held sway. Then the pessimism of Schopenhauer seized upon, and pervaded, the national mind for long years. In the late 'eighties and early 'nineties, a loudly voiced demand for a new and optimistic literature resulted in a passing triumph of Naturalism, deeply pessimistic from the first. Finally, the influence of Nietzsche, neglected, depreciated, extolled by turns, much as Schopenhauer before him, became paramount, as wholly suited to the present phase of the national mind.

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This new mental and moral malady of Germany bears many names, and no definite one-Subjective Idealism, Neo-Romanticism, Individualism. Nietzsche, weak, delicate, kindly, passed from the altruistic pessimism of Schopenhauer and Wagner to the recognition of biological laws and a voluntary optimism. He would be the very opposite of that to which his nature inclined him. He would preach a gospel of joyous and adventurous force. It is true that man shall fix for himself his own aim.' 'The true liberty of man, the true freethought, is that which the Crusaders learnt in the East from the order of the Assassins: "Nothing is true, all is allowable." Once Germany, with Prussia for its model, was docile and obedient; now it is exposed to the ravages of that Individualism which rejects all laws, except of its own making, which wrongly interprets the proposition of Spinoza that anticipates the doctrine of Nietzsche: Every one without exception may, by sovereign right of nature, do whatever he thinks will advance his own interest.' Once Germany was idealistic and humanitarian; now we range ourselves among the conquerors; we meditate upon the necessity of a new order of things, of a new slavery also—for every amelioration of the type "man" in force or in happiness requires as its condition a new kind of slavery.' Once Germany patiently prosecuted the search for objective truth; now it is discovered that there is no objective truth, and 'the supremacy of the scientific mandarin' is no more to be admired than the success of democracy.' Once Germany was romantic, 'constantly remembering the past,' said Heine, and constantly brooding over the future, but

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never knowing how to grasp and understand the present'; now it is-or lately was-fervently romantic anew, straining towards the future and its promise that the 'superman' shall be born, the forceful German generation that shall hold the world in thrall.

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It were long to follow in detail the ravages of this new Idealism, the moral perversities due to this neoRomantic Individualism. 'God is dead,' proclaimed Nietzsche. And his disciples, aristocrats of the spirit, Künstler, claim all license to luxuriate amid 'the fulness of phenomena,' and to 'live themselves out.' Religion is gone; 'good' is that which is advantageous to self and moral values are but degrees of strength and weakness. A vague theism, a 'kingdom of God' is indeed still preached. An Eucken can revive the moral and spiritual order of Fichte; but Fichte declared that the moral order itself is God. 'We need no other, and can conceive no other.' And Eucken but presents the conception of a living and personal God as a consolation for those in deepest sorrow. Destructive criticism has given place to constructive engines of material force. Textual and historical criticism has given place to the refutation and rejection of Christian morals. There is a constant demand from many quarters that a new religion shall come into being. Mysticism, intuition, the acknowledgment that instinct-the subconscious, or unconscious -is supreme, mainly go to the making of it. Nor is any hesitation felt as to whether the subconscious may not be the source of animal tendencies rather than of divine. The ape and tiger must not die. For Nietzsche says:

'Man requires that which is worst within him, to attain that which is best; his worst instincts are the best portion of his might. . . . Man must become better and worse.' 'Here is the new law, oh my brethren, which I promulgate unto you: Become hard. For creative spirits are hard. And you must find a supreme blessedness in impressing the mark of your hand, in inscribing your will, upon thousands and thousands, as on soft wax.'

We are warned by Burke not to bring an impeachment against a whole nation. The majority of Germans, no doubt, still hold by tradition. The simple and unsophisticated among them bid us remember that the

Emperor, their 'Peace-Emperor, is 'pious.' But he has learnt the lesson of Bismarck, and is a Hohenzollern. Frederick William the Fourth, equally romantic with William the Second, declared in 1848: 'I will never permit a scrap of paper (the constitution he was offering) to interpose between the Lord God on High and myself.' The grandfather of the Emperor, returning to Berlin after the victory of Sadowa, opened the Chambers by thanking Providence for the grace which had aided Prussia to drive away from its frontiers the invasion of the enemy-the self-defence being a carefully planned onslaught, that the hegemony of Germany might be wrested from Austria. 'Take away from me my convictions,' said Bismarck, and you have lost your Chancellor. Deprive me of my union with God, and tomorrow I will pack up, and grow oats at Varzin.' Such religion is mystic fetichism. He, and the House of Hohenzollern, instead of regarding themselves as instruments of destiny, of God, should have considered Bacon's statement that it were better to have no opinion of God at all than such an opinion as is unworthy of him'; they should have remembered that God is the God not of one, but of all nations, and the God of mercy. Whereas the Emperor's famous address to his army in China was but a paraphrase of Nietzsche's 'Verily, let my happiness, my liberty, rush onward like the hurricane. My enemies will believe that it is the Spirit of Evil raging above their heads.'

As his more recent speeches show, the Emperor has studied Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who is one of those who require a new religion, of German origin, and suited to the Germans. And there are other signs that the Emperor is ready to favour and foster such a religion, since it would be the proclamation of a Teutonic Jehovah, guiding his German elect to world-victory, with the House of Hohenzollern as warrior high-priests. Or in place of Jehovah, read Odin. Renan wrote to Strauss: Your German race always seems to believe in Walhalla.' Heine, before Renan, declared that Christianity-and that is its fairest merit-has to some degree softened the brutal Germanic delight in warfare, but could not destroy it; and when once that taming talisman, the Cross, is broken, then once more rattles out the wildness of the

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