THE NEW SOCIETY

 BY

 WALTHER RATHENAU

 AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION BY ARTHUR WINDHAM

 NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 1921

PREFACE

Walther Rathenau, author of _Die neue Gesellschaft_ and other studiesof economic and social conditions in modern Germany, was born in 1867. His father, Emil Rathenau, was one of the most distinguished figuresin the great era of German industrial development, and his son wasbrought up in the atmosphere of hard work, of enterprise, and ofpublic affairs. After his school days at a _Gymnasium_, or classicalschool, he studied mathematics, physics and chemistry at theUniversities of Berlin and of Strassburg, taking his degree at the ageof twenty-two. Certain discoveries made by him in chemistry andelectrolysis led to the establishment of independent manufacturing works, which he controlled with success, and eventually to his connexion withthe world-famous A. E. G. --_Allgemeine Electrizitätsgesellschaft_--atthe head of which he now stands. During the war he scored a veryremarkable and exceptional success as controller of the organizationfor the supply of raw materials. He is thus not merely a scholar andthinker, but one who has lived and more than held his own in the thickof commercial and industrial life, and who knows by actual experiencethe subject-matter with which he deals. 

The present study, with its wide outlook and its resolutedetermination to see facts as they are, should have much value for allstudents of latter-day politics and economics in Europe; for thoughRathenau is mainly concerned with conditions in his own land the sameconditions affect all countries to a greater or less degree, and hedeals with general principles of human psychology and of economic lawwhich prevail everywhere in the world. It is not too much to say that"The New Society" constitutes a landmark in the history of economicand social thought, and contains matter for discussion, for sifting, for experiment and for propaganda which should occupy serious thinkersand reformers for many a day to come. His suggestions and conclusionsmay not be all accepted, or all acceptable, but few will deny thatthey constitute a distinct advance in the effort to bring serious anddisinterested thought to the solution of our social problems, and inthis conviction we offer the present complete and authorizedtranslation to English readers. 

THE NEW SOCIETY

I

Is there any sign or criterion by which we can tell that a humansociety has been completely socialized?

There is one and one only: it is when no one can have an incomewithout working for it. 

That is the sign of Socialism; but it is not the goal. In itself it isnot decisive. If every one had enough to live on, it would not matterfor what he received money or goods, or even whether he got them fornothing. And relics of the system of income which is not worked forwill always remain--for instance, provision for old age. 

The goal is not any kind of division of income or allotment ofproperty. Nor is it equality, reduction of toil, or increase of theenjoyment of life. It is the abolition of the proletarian condition;abolition of the lifelong hereditary serfage, the nameless hereditaryservitude, of one of the two peoples who are called by the same name;the annulment of the hereditary twofold stratification of society, theabolition of the scandalous enslavement of brother by brother, of thatWestern abuse which is the basis of our civilization as slavery wasof the antique, and which vitiates all our deeds, all our creations, all our joys. 

Nor is even this the final goal--no economy, no society can talk of afinal goal--the only full and final object of all endeavour upon earthis the development of the human soul. A final goal, however, pointsout the direction, though not the path, of politics. 

The political object which I have described as the abolition of theproletarian condition may, as I have shown in _Things that are toCome_, [1] be closely approached by a suitable policy in regard toproperty and education; above all, by a limitation of the right ofinheritance. Of socialization in the strict sense there is, for thispurpose, no need. Yet a far-reaching policy of socialization--and I donot here refer to a mere mechanical nationalization of the means ofproduction but to a radical economic and social resettlement--isnecessary and urgent, because it awakens and trains responsibilities, and because it withdraws from the sluggish hands of the governingclasses the determination of time and of method, and places it in thehands that have a better title, those of the whole commonalty, which, at present, stands helpless through sheer democracy. For only in thehands of a political people does democracy mean the rule of thepeople; in those of an untrained and unpolitical people it becomesmerely an affair of debating societies and philistine chatter at theinn ordinary. The symbol of German bourgeois democracy is the tavern;thence enlightenment is spread and there judgments are formed; it isthe meeting place of political associations, the forum of theirorators, the polling-booth for elections. 

But the sign that this far-reaching socialization has been actuallycarried out is the cessation of all income without work. I say thesign, but not the sole postulate; for we must postulate a complete andgenuine democratization of the State and public economy, and a systemof education equally accessible to all: only then can we say that themonopoly of class and culture has been smashed. But the cessation ofthe workless income will show the downfall of the last ofclass-monopolies, that of the Plutocracy. 

It is not very easy to imagine what society will be like when theseobjects have been realised, at least if we are thinking not of a briefperiod like the present Russian régime, or a passing phase as inHungary, but an enduring and stationary condition. A dictatorialoligarchy, like that of the Bolshevists, does not come intoconsideration here, and the well-meaning Utopias of social romancescrumble to nothing. They rest, one and all, on the blissfully ignorantassumption of a state of popular well-being exaggerated tenfold beyondall possibility. 

The knowledge of the sort of social condition towards which at presentwe Germans, and then Europe, and finally the other nations are tendingin this vertical Migration of the Peoples, will not only decide foreach of us his attitude towards the great social question, but ourwhole political position as well. It is quite in keeping with Germantraditions that in fixing our aims and forming our resolves we shouldbe guided not by positive but by negative impulses--not by the effortto get something but to get away from it. To this effort, which isreally a flight, we give the positive name of Socialism, withouttroubling ourselves in the least how things will look--not in thesense of popular watchwords but in actual fact--when we have got whatwe are seeking. 

This is not merely a case of lack of imagination; it is that weGermans have, properly speaking, no understanding of politicaltendencies. We are more or less educated in business, in science, inthought, but in politics we are about on the same level as the EastSlavonic peasantry. At best we know--and even that not always--whatoppresses, vexes and tortures us; we know our grievances, and think wehave conceived an aim when we simply turn them upside down. Suchprocesses of thought as "the police are to blame, the war-conditionsare to blame, the Prussians are to blame, the Jews are to blame, theEnglish are to blame, the priests are to blame, the capitalists are toblame"--all these we quite understand. Just as with the Slavs, if ourgood-nature and two centuries of the love of order did not forbid it, our primitive political instincts would find expression in a pogrom inthe shape of a peasant-war, of a religious war, of witch-trials, orJew-baiting. Our blatant patriotism bore the plainest signs of such atemper; half nationalism, half aggression against some bugbear orother; never a proud calm, an earnest self-dedication, a struggle fora political ideal. 

We have now a Republic in Germany: no one seriously desired it. Wehave at last established Parliamentarianism: no one wanted it. We haveset up a kind of Socialism: no one believed in it. We used to say:"The people will live and die for their princes; our last drop ofblood for the Hohenzollerns"--no one denied it. "The people mean to beruled by their hereditary lords; they will go through fire for theirofficers; rather death than yield a foot of German soil to the foe. "Was all this a delusion? By no means; it was sincere enough, only itdid not go deep. It was the kind of sincerity which depends on notknowing enough of the alternative possibilities. 

When the alternatives revealed themselves as possible and actual, thenwe all turned republican, even to the cottagers in Pomerania. When themilitary strike had broken down discipline, the officers weremishandled; when the war was lost, the fleet disgraced, and thehomeland defiled, then we began to play and dance. 

But was this frivolity? Not at all; it was a childish want ofpolitical imagination. The Poles, a people not remotely comparable tothe German in depth of soul and the capacity for training talent, havefor a century cherished no other thought than that of national unity, while we passively resign our territories. No Englishman or Japaneseor American will ever understand us when we tell him that thismilitary discipline of ours, this war-lust, did not represent apassion for dominion and aggression, but was merely the docility of achildish people which wants nothing, and can imagine nothing, but thatthings should go on as they happen, at the moment, to be. 

We Germans know but little of the laws which govern the formation ofnational character. The capacity of a people for profundity is notprofundity, either of the individual or of the community. It mayexpress itself in the masses as mere plasticity and softness ofspirit. The capacity for collective sagacity and strength of willdemands from the individual merely a dry intelligence in humanaffairs, and egoism. It would be too much to say that our politicalweakness may be merely the expression of spiritual power, for thelatter has not proved an obstacle to success in business. Indolenceand belief in authority have their share in it. 

But have we not been the classic land of social democracy, and have wenot become that of Radicalism? Well, we have been, indeed, and are, with our submissiveness to authority and our capacity for discipline, the classic land of organized grumbling; and the classic land, too, ofanti-semitism which deprived us of the very forces we stood most inneed of--productive scepticism and the imagination for concretethings. Organized grumbling is not the same thing as politicalcreation. A Socialism and Radicalism poorer in ideas than thepost-Marxian German Socialism has never existed. Half of it was merelyclerical work, and the other half was agitators' Utopianism of thecheapest variety. 

Nothing was more significant than the fact that the mighty event ofthe German Revolution was not the result of affection but ofdisaffection. It is not we who liberated ourselves, it was the enemy;it was our destruction that set us free. On the day before we askedfor the armistice, perhaps even on the day before the flight of theKaiser, a plébiscite would have yielded an overwhelming majority forthe monarchy and against Socialism. What I so often said before thewar came true: "He who trains his children with the rod learns onlythrough the rod. "

And to-day, when everything is seething and fermenting--no thanks toSocialism for that--all intellectual work has to be done outside ofthe ranks of social-democracy, which stumbles along on its twocrutches of "Socialization" and "Soviets. "[2] Orthodox Socialism isstill a case of the "lesser evil, " what the French call a _pis aller_. "Things are so bad that any change must be for the better. " What is tomake them better we are told in the socialist catechism; but _how_ itis to do so, how and what anything is to become, this, the onlyquestion that matters, is regarded as irrelevant. It is answered bysome halting and insincere stammer about "surplus value" which is tomake everybody well off--and which would yield all round, as I haveelsewhere shown, just twenty-five marks a head. Fifteen millions ofgrown men are pressing forward into a Promised Land revealed throughthe fog of political assemblies and in the thunder of parrot-phrases--aland from which no one will ever bring back a bunch of grapes. 

If one would interrogate not the agitators, but their hearers, andfind out what they instinctively conceive this land to look like, weshould get the answer, timid and naïve but at the same time thedeepest and shrewdest that it is possible to give--that it is a landwhere there are no longer any rich. 

A most true and truthful reply! And yet a profound error silentlylurks in it. You imagine, do you not, that in a land where there areno more rich people there will also be no more poor? "Why, of coursenot! How can there be poor people when there are no more rich?" Andyet there will be. In the land where there are no more rich there willbe _only_ poor, only very poor, people. 

Whoever does not know this and is a Socialist, that man is merely oneof the herd or he is a dupe. He who knows it and conceals it is adeceiver. He who knows it, and in spite of that, nay, on account ofthat, is a Socialist, is a man of the future. 

Though the crowd be satisfied with some dim feeling that this, anyhow, is the tendency of the times and that with this stream one must swim;though the more thoughtful contemplate the evils of the time anddecide to put up with the _pis aller_; the responsible thinker isunder the obligation of investigating the land into which the peopleare being led. We must know what it looks like, where there are norich people and where no one can have an income without working forit, we must understand what we call the "new society" so as to be ableto shape it aright. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: _Von Kommenden Dingen_, by Walther Rathenau. Berlin. S. Fischer. ]

[Footnote 2: Workers' and Soldiers' Councils. ]

II

The question is not very urgent. 

As surely as the hundred years' course of the social World-Revolutioncannot be arrested, so surely can we prophesy that the process cannotmaintain all along the line the rapid movement of its beginning. Thevictorious and the defeated countries will have to work out to the endthe changes and interchanges of their various phases, for in thehistorical developments which we witness to-day, we find mingledtogether the phenomena of organic growth and of disease; already wesee that the Socialism of the healthy nations is different from thatof the sick ones. It is in vain that those who are sick with theBolshevist disease dream that they can infect the world. 

The small daily and yearly movements in our realm of Central Europecannot be determined beforehand, because they depend upon small, accidental, local, and external forces. The great and necessary issuesof events can be predicted, but it would be folly to discuss theiraccidental flux and reflux. When an unguarded house is filled withexplosives from the cellar to the roof, then we know that it will oneday be blown up; but whether this will happen on a Sunday or aMonday, in the morning or in the evening, or whether the left doorpost will be left standing or no, it would be idle to inquire. 

From the historical point of view it is of no consequence whetherRadicalism may make an inroad here and there, or whether here andthere the forces of reaction and restoration may collect themselvesfor a transitory triumph. The great movement of history, as we alwaysfind when a catastrophe has worked itself out, grows slower, and thisretardation in itself looks like reaction. We, who are not accustomedto catastrophes, and who did not produce this first one, but rathersuffered it, we, who easily get sea-sick after every rapidmovement--think, for instance, of the former Reichstag--we shallcertainly experience, as the first deep wave of the Revolution sinksinto us, an aristocratic, dynastic, and plutocratic Romanticism, ayearning for the colour and glitter of the time of glory, a revoltagainst the spiritless, mechanical philanthrophy of unemployed oratorsof about fourth-form standard intellectually; against the monotonousand insincere tirades of paid agitators and their restless disciples;against laziness; ignorance, greed, and exaggeration masquerading aspopular scientific economy; and against the brutal and extortionateupthrust from below. And so we shall arrive at the reverse kind offolly, an admiration and bad imitation of foreign pride and pomp, anarrogant individualism and a hardening of our human feeling. Theintellectual war profiteers, who are all for radicalism to-day, willsoon be wearing cornflowers[3] in their button-holes. 

For the third time we shall see an illustration of the naïveshamelessness of the turn-coat. The spiritual process of conversion isworth noticing; Paul was converted to be a converter. But thescurrying of the intellectual speculator from the position which hasfailed into the position which has won, with the full intention ofscurrying back again if necessary, and always with the claim toinstruct other people, is an expression of the alarming fact that lifehas become not an affair of inward conviction, but of getting theright tip. 

The turn-coat movement began when a shortsighted crowd, incapable ofjudgment, and with their minds clouded with a few cheap phrases, expected from a quick and victorious war the strengthening of all theelements of Force, and feared to be left stranded. Even the mostthreadbare kind of liberalism appeared to be compromising, theyclamoured for "shining armour. " The most wretched victims in soul andbody, who were obliged to flee forwards because they could not flee inany other direction, were called heroes, and the manliest word in ourlanguage, a word of which only the freest and the greatest are worthy, was degraded. One who has experienced the hate and fury of theturn-coats who poured contempt upon every word against the war and the"great days, " is unable to understand how a whole people can throwits errors overboard without shame and sorrow--or he understands itonly too well. At this day we are being mocked and preached at by theturn-coats of the second transformation, and to-morrow we shall besmiled at by those of the third. 

But it does not matter. The moving forces of our epoch do not comefrom business offices nor from the street, the rostrum, the pulpit, orthe professorial chair. The noisy rush of yesterday, to-day andto-morrow is only the furious motion of the outermost circle, thecentre moves upon its way, quietly as the stars. 

We have in our survey to leap over several periods of forward andbackward movement and we shall earn the thanks of none of them. Whatis too conservative for one will be too revolutionary for another, andthe æsthete will scornfully tell us that we have no fibre. When weshow that what awaits us is no fools' paradise, but the danger of atemporary reverse of humanity and culture, then the facile Utopianistwill shout us down with his two parrot-phrases, [4] and when we, out ofa sense of duty, of harmony with the course of the world andconfidence in justice at the soul of things, tread the path of danger, precipitous though it be, then we shall be scorned by all theworshippers of Force and despisers of mankind. 

But we for our part shall not pander either to the force-worshippersor to the masses. We serve no powers that be. Our love goes out to thePeople; but the People are not a crowd at a meeting, nor a sum-totalof interests, nor are they the newspapers or debating-clubs. ThePeople are the waking or sleeping, the leaking, frozen, choked, orgushing well of the German spirit. It is with that spirit, in thepresent and in the future, as it runs its course into the sea ofhumanity, that we have here to do. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: The emblem of the Hohenzollerns. ]

[Footnote 4: The reference, apparently, is to the argument that anychange must be for the better, and to the reliance on surplus value. See pp. 13, 14. ]

III

The criterion which we have indicated for the socialized society ofthe future is a material one. But is the spiritual condition of anepoch to be determined by material arrangements? Is this not aconfession of faith in materialism?

We are speaking of a criterion, not of a prime moving force. I have nodesire, however, to avoid going into the material, or rather we shouldsay mechanical, interpretation of history. I have done it more thanonce in my larger works, and for the sake of coherence I may repeat itin outline here. 

The laws which determine individual destinies are reproduced in thehistory of collective movements. A man's career is not prescribed byhis bodily form, his expression, or his environment; but there is inthese things a certain connexion and parallelism, for the same lawswhich determine the course of his intellectual and spiritual lifereflect themselves in bodily and practical shape. Every instant of ourexperience, all circumstances in which we find ourselves, every limbthat we grow, every accident that happens to us, is an expression orproduct of our character. We are indeed subject to human limitations;we are not at liberty to live under water or in another planet; butwithin these wide boundaries each of us can shape his own life. Toobserve a man, his work, his fate, his body and expression, hisconnexions and his marriage, his belongings and his associations, isto know the man. 

From this point of view all social, economic and political schemesbecome futile, for if man is so sovereign a being there is no need tolook after him. But these schemes re-acquire a relative importancewhen we consider the average level of man's will-power, as we meet itin human experience--a power which, as a rule, shows itself unable tomake head against a certain maximum of pressure from externalcircumstances. And again, these schemes are really a part of theexpression of human will, for through them collective humanity battleswith its surroundings, its contemporary world, and freely shapes itsown destinies. 

The inner laws of the community harmonize with those of theindividuals who compose it. The fact that certain national traits ofwill and character are conditioned or even enforced by poverty orwealth, soil and climate, an inland or maritime position, tends toobscure the fact that these external conditions are not really laid onthe people but have been willed by themselves. A people _wills_ tohave a nomadic life, or wills to have a sea-coast, or willsagriculture, or war; and has the power, if its will be strong enough, to obtain its desire, or failing that to break up and perish. It isthe same will and character which decides for well-being and culture, or indolence and dependence, or labour and spiritual development. TheVenetians did not have architecture and painting bestowed upon thembecause they happened to have become rich, nor the English sea-powerbecause they happened to live on an island: no, the Venetians willedfreedom, power and art, and the Anglo-Saxons willed the sea. 

There is a grain of truth in the popular political belief that warembodies a judgment of God. At any rate character is judged by it; notindeed in the sense of popular politics, that one can "hold out" in ahopeless position, but because all the history that went before thewar, the capacity or incapacity of politics and leadership is aquestion of character--and with us it was a question of indolence, ofpolitical apathy, of class-rule, philistinish conceit and greed ofgain. Nowhere was this conception of the judgment of God soblasphemously exaggerated as with us Germans, when the lord of ourarmed hosts, at the demand of the barracks greedy for power, of thetavern-benches, the state-bureaus and the debating societies wassummoned, and charged with the duty, forsooth, of chastisingEngland--England, which they only knew out of newspaper reports!To-day this exaggeration is being paid for in humiliation, for God didnot prove controllable, and His naïve blasphemers must silently andwith grinding teeth admit that their foes are in the right when they, in their turn, appeal to the same judgment to justify, without limit, everything they desire to do. 

After these brief observations on the psycho-physical complex, Spiritand Destiny, we hope we shall not be misunderstood when for the sakeof brevity we speak as if the spirit of the new order were determinedby its material construction, while in reality it incorporates itselftherein. The structure is the easier to survey, and we therefore makeit the starting-point of our discussion. 

IV

All civilisations known to us have sprung from peoples which werenumerous, wealthy and divided into two social strata. They reachedtheir climax at the moment when the two strata began to melt into one. 

It is not enough, therefore, that a people should be numerous andwealthy; it must, with all its wealth and its power, contain a largeproportion of poor and even oppressed and enslaved subjects. If it hasnot got these, it must master and make use of other foreign culturesas a substitute. That is what Rome did; it is what America is doing. 

It is terrible, but comprehensible. For up to this point theunconscious processes of Nature, the law of mutual strife, hasprevailed. So far, collective organizations have been beasts of prey;only now are they about to cross the boundaries of the human order. 

Comprehensible and explicable. For all creations of culture holdtogether; one cannot pursue the cheaper varieties while renouncing themore costly. There is no cheap culture. In their totality they demandoutlay, the most tremendous outlay known to history, the only outlayby which human toil is recompensed, over and above the supply ofabsolute necessaries. 

The creations of civilisation, like all things living and dead, followon each other--plants, men, beasts and utensils have their sequencegeneration after generation. Men must paint and look at pictures forten thousand years before a new picture comes into existence. Ourpoetry and our research are the fruit of thousands of years. This isno disparagement to genius in work and thought, genius is at once new, ancient and eternal, even as the blossom is a new thing on the oldstem, and belongs to an eternal type. When we hear that a native inCentral Africa or New Zealand has produced an oil-painting we knowthat somehow or other he must have got to Paris. When a Europeanartist writes or paints in Tahiti, what he produces is not a work ofTahitian culture. When civilisation has withered away on somesterilized soil, it can only be revived by new soil and foreign seed. 

The continuity of culture, even in civilized times, can only, however, be maintained by constant outlay, just as in arid districts aluxuriant vegetation needs continuous irrigation. The flood ofOriental wealth had to pour itself into Italy in order to bring forththe bloom of Renaissance art. Thousands of patricians, hundreds oftemporal and spiritual princes, had to found and to adorn temples andpalaces, gardens, monuments, pageants, games and household goods inorder that art and science, schooling, mastership, discipleship andtradition might grow up. The worship of foreign culture whichcharacterized Germany in the seventeenth and half of the eighteenthcenturies only meant that our soil was grown too poor to yield a cropof its own. The culture of the Middle Ages remained international onlyso long as the population of Europe was too sparse and theopportunities of work too scanty to occupy local energies; even in thethinly populated, Homeric middle-ages of Greece, the builder and thepoet were not settled in one place, they were wandering artists. Ifto-day the Republic of Guatemala or Honduras should want asenate-house or a railway-station they will probably send to London orParis for an architect. 

Even technique in handicraft and industry, that typical art ofcivilization, cannot dispense with a great and continuous outlay ontraining, commissioning and marketing in order to maintain itself. Although it has not happened yet, there is no reason why a Serb or aSlovak should not make some important discovery if he has been trainedat a European University and learnt the technical tradition. That willnot, however, give rise to an independent and enduring Serbian orSlovakian technique, even though the costliest Universities andlaboratories should be established in the country and foreign teacherscalled to teach in them. After all that, one must have a market in thecountry itself; expert purchasers, manufacturers, middle-men, atrained army of engineers, craftsmen, masters, workmen and a foreignmarket as well--in short, the technical atmosphere--in order to keepup the standard of manufacture and production. 

A poor country cannot turn out products of high value for a rich one;it has not had the education arising from demand. In products relatingto sport and to comfort, for instance, England was a model, but inFrance these products were ridiculously misunderstood and imitatedwith silly adornments, while on the other hand French products ofluxury and art-industry were sought for by all countries. German wareswere considered to be cheap and nasty, until the land grew rich, andbrought about the co-operation of its forces of science and technique, production and marketing, auxiliary industries and remote profits, finance and commerce, education and training, judgment and criticism, habits of life and a sense of comparative values. 

But human forces need the same nurture, the same outlay and the samehigh training, as institutions and material products. Delicate workdemands sensitive hands and a sheltered way of life; discovery andinvention demand leisure and freedom; taste demands training andtradition, scientific thinking and artistic conception demand anenvironment with an unbroken continuity of cultivation, thought andintelligence. A dying civilisation can live for a while on theexisting humus of culture, on the existing atmosphere of thought, butto create anew these elements of life is beyond its powers. 

Do not let us deceive ourselves, but look the facts in the face! Allthese excellent Canadians, with or without an academic degree, whoinnocently pride themselves on a proletarian absence of prejudice, areadoptive children of a plutocratic and aristocratic cultivation. It isall the same even if they lay aside their stiff collars andeye-glasses; their every word and argument, their forms of thought, their range of knowledge, their strongly emphasized intellectualityand taste for art and science, their whole handiwork and industry, arean inheritance from what they supposed they had cast off and a tributeto what they pretend to despise. Genuine radicalism is only to berespected when it understands the connexion of things and is notafraid of consequences. It must understand--and I shall make itclear--that its rapid advance will kill culture; and the properconclusion is that it ought to despise culture, not to sponge on it. The early Christians abolished all the heathen rubbish andabominations, the early Radicals would have hurried, in the firstinstance, to pick out the plums. 

Culture and civilization, as we see, demand a continuous and enormousoutlay; an outlay in leisure, an outlay in working power, an outlay inwealth. They need patronage and a market, they need the school, theyneed models, tradition, comparison, judgment, intelligence, cultivation, disposition, the right kind of nursery--an atmosphere. One who stands outside it can serve it, often more powerfully withhis virgin strength than one who is accustomed to it--but he must becarried along and animated by the breath of the same atmosphere. Culture and civilization require a rich soil. 

But the richness of the soil is not sufficient; culture must be basedupon, and increased by, contrast. Wealth must have at its disposalgreat numbers of men who are poor and dependent. How otherwise shallthe outlay of culture be met? One man must have many at his disposal;but how can he, if they are all his equals? The outlay will be large, but it must be feasible; how can it, if the labour of thousands is notcheap? The few, the exalted, must develop power and splendour, theymust offer types for imitation: how can they do that without aretinue, without spectators, without the herd? A land of well-being, that is to say, of equally distributed well-being, remains petty andprovincial. When a State and its authorities, councils of solid andthrifty members of societies for this or that, take over the office ofa Mæcenas or a Medici, with their proposals, their calculations, theirobjections, their control, then we get things that look likewar-memorials, waiting-rooms, newspaper-kiosks and drinking-saloons. It was not always so? No; but even in the most penurious times it waskings who were the patrons. 

But if culture is such a poison-flower, if it flourishes only in theswamp of poverty and under the sun of riches, it must and ought to bedestroyed. Our sentiment will no longer endure the happiness andbrilliance of the few growing out of the misery of the many; the daysof the senses are over, and the day of conscience is beginning todawn. 

And now a timid and troubled puritanism makes itself heard: Is thereno middle way? Will not half-measures suffice? No, it will not do; letthis be said once for all as plainly as possible, you champions of thesupply of "bare necessities" who talk about "daily bread" and want tobutter it with the "noblest pleasures of art. " It will not do!

No, half-measures will not do, nor quarter-measures. They might, ifthe whole world, the sick, the healthy and the bloated all togetherwere of the same mind as ourselves. In Moscow it is said that peopleare expecting the world-revolution every hour, but the world declinesto oblige. Therefore, if culture and civilization are to remain whatthey were, is there nothing for it but with one wrench to tear thepoisoned garment from our body? Or--is there then an "or"? Let us see. We have a long way before us. First of all we must know how rich orhow poor we and the world are going to be, on the day when there willbe no income without working for it and no rich people any more. 

If our economic system made us self-supporting we might arrangematters on the model of the Boer Republic which had all it needed, andnow and then traded a load of ostrich feathers for coffee and hymnbooks. But we, alas! in order to find nourishment for twentymillions[5] have to export blood and brains. And if, in order to buyphosphates, we offer cotton stockings and night-caps as the highestproducts of our artistic energies, and declare that they are all thesoundest hand-work--for in our "daily bread" economy we shall havelong forgotten how to work such devil's tools as the modernknitting-machine--then people will reply to us: in the first place wedon't want night-caps, and if we did we can supply them for one-tenthof the cost; and our cotton goods will be sent back to us asunsaleable. 

A world-trade, even of modest dimensions, can only be carried on uponthe basis of high technical accomplishment, but this height ofaccomplishment cannot be attained on the basis of any penny-wiseeconomy. Whoever wills the part must also will the whole, but to thiswhole belongs not merely the conception of a technique, but of acivilization, and indeed of a culture. One might as well demand of amusic-hall orchestra which plays ragtime all the year round that oncein the year, and once only, on Good Friday, it should pull itselftogether to give an adequate performance of the Passion Music of Bach. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: By this figure the author seems to be referring to thepopulation of the impoverished Germany of the future if the course ofSocialism proceeds on wrong lines. ]

V

For some decades Germany will be one of the poorest of countries. Howpoor she will be does not depend on herself alone, but on the powerand the will for mischief of others--who hate us. 

However, poverty and wealth are relative terms; Germans are stillricher on the average than their forefathers; richer than the Romansor Greeks. The standard of well-being is set by the best-off of thecompetitors, for he it is who determines the current standard oftechnique and industry, the methods of production, the minimum oflabour and skill. We cannot, as we have already seen, keep aloof fromworld-competition, for Germany needs cheap goods. We must thereforetry to keep step so far as we can. 

Even if we shut our eyes and take no more account of our debt toforeign lands than we do of the war-tribute, we must admit that theaverage standard of well-being in America far surpasses the German. Goods are not so dear as with us, and the wages of the skilled workeramounts to between seven and ten dollars a day--more than 100 marks inour money; and many artisans drive to their workshops in their ownautomobiles. 

If, now, we ask our Radicals how they envisage the problem ofcompetition with such a country, which in one generation will betwenty-or thirty-fold as rich as we are, they will blurt out a fewsentences in which we shall catch the word "Soviet system, " "surplusvalue, "[6] "world revolution. " But in truth the question will neveroccur to them--it is not ventilated at public meetings. 

Among themselves they talk, albeit without much conviction, about"surplus value"--which has nothing whatever to do with the presentquestion, and in regard to which it has been proved to them oftenenough that so far as it can be made use of at all, it only meansabout a pound of butter extra per head of the population. 

The economic superiority of the Western powers, however, goes ongrowing, inasmuch as to all appearance they are getting to workseriously to establish the new economy (which we have buried) in theform of State Socialism. A healthy, or what is to-day the same thing, a victorious economy, does not leap over any of its stages; it willwork gradually through the apparently longer, but constant, movementfrom Capitalism to State Socialism and thence to full Socialism; whilewe, it seems, want to take a shortcut, and to miss out the interveningstage. And we lose so much time and energy in restless fluctuationsforward and backward, hither and thither, that this leap in advancemay fall short. 

If anything could be more stupid and calamitous than the war itself itwas the time when it broke out. There was one thing which the bigcapitalism of the world was formed to supply, which it was able tosupply, and, in fact, was supplying: the thing which not onlyjustified capitalism, but showed it to be an absolutely necessarystage in the development of a denser population. This was theenrichment of the peoples, the rapid, and even anticipatoryrestoration of equilibrium between the growing population and theindispensable increase in the means of production; in other words, general well-being. The unbroken progress of America, and the almostunbroken progress of England will demonstrate that in one, or at mosttwo, generations the power of work and the output of mechanism wouldhave risen to such a pitch that we could have done anything we likedin the direction of lightening human labour and reconciling socialantagonisms. 

Alas, it was in vain! The rapid advance to prosperity of the people ofCentral Europe, who had been accustomed to thrift and economy, went totheir heads; they fell victims to the poison of capitalism and ofmechanism; they were unable, like America in its youthful strength, tomake their new circumstances deepen their sense of responsibility; intheir greedy desire to store as much as possible of the heavenly mannain their private barns they abandoned their destinies to asuperannuated, outworn feudal class and to aspiring magnates of thebourgeoisie; they would not be taught by political catastrophes, andat last, in the catastrophe of the war, they lost at once theirimaginary hopes, their traditional power and the economic basis oftheir existence. 

Those who are now pursuing a policy of desperation are unconsciouslybuilding their hopes on the breakdown which brought them to the top:they are avowedly making the hoped-for revolution in the West thecentral point of their system. If the West holds out, they will befalse prophets; but it will not only hold out, it will in thebeginning at all events, witness a great and passionate uprising ofimperialistic and capitalistic tendencies. If there is any one who didnot understand that a policy based on hopes of other peoples'bankruptcy is the most flimsy and frivolous of all policies, he mightwell have learned it from the war. 

Germany must forge her own destinies for herself, without side-glancesat the good or ill fortune of others. Had time only been given us topass naturally from the stage of a prolonged and corrupted childhoodinto that of a manly responsibility, our ultimate recovery would beassured. But we have to accomplish in months what ought to be theevolution of decades; our national training has left us withoutconvictions, we have no eye for the true boundaries of rights, claimsand responsibilities, and we hesitate as to how far we must or oughtto go. Unprepared, weakened, impoverished and sick, we are required, at the most unlucky moment, to work out a new and unprecedented orderof life. Before even the educated classes are capable of forming ajudgment on the question, the most incapable masses of the rawestyouth, of the lowest classes of society, are let loose, and sit uponthe judgment-seat. 

It is not only that we have been rich and have become very poor, butwe were always politically immature, and are so still. If the order ofSociety is to be that of root-and-branch Socialism, it will mean theproletarian condition for all of us, and for a long time to come. There is no use in flattering ourselves and painting the future betterthan it is; the truth must be spoken with all plainness. If we workhard, and under capable guidance, each of us will at most have aneffective income of 500 marks in pre-war values, or, say, 2000 marksfor the family. This average will be higher if we proceed on theprinciples of the New Economy, [7] but again will be reduced by thenecessity for allowing extra pay for work of higher value. If to-daythe average income available is markedly higher than the above, thereason is that we are living on our capital; we are living on theproducts of work which ought to be reserved for the maintenance andrenewal of the means of production; in other words we are exhaustingthe soil and slaughtering our stock. We are also consuming whatforeign countries give us on credit; in other words, we are living onborrowed money. 

It is childish lying and deception to act on the tacit assumption thatthoroughgoing Socialism means something like a garden-city idyll, withplay-houses, open-air theatres, excursions, picturesque raiment andfire-side art. This in itself quite decent ideal of the averagearchitect, art-craftsman and art-reformer if expressed in dry figureswould, "at the lowest estimate" as they say, demand about fivefold thecapacity for production attainable by the utmost exertions and with aten hours' day _before the war_--before the downfall of our economyand our exploitation by the enemy. 

To place one-third of our working-class in decent, freehold dwellingswould alone, if the material and means of production sufficed, requirethe whole working-capacity of the country for two years. Even afterthe last manufacturer's villa-residence, the last palace-hotel, havelong been turned into tenements, the solution of the most urgent partof the housing-question will still be an affair of decades. For thesake of the last remnant of our self-respect we must finally tearasunder that web of economic falsehood, woven out of ignorance, mentallethargy, concealment and illusion, which has taken the place of thepolitical. Let us see any one attempt to prove that Germany can carryon, I do not say a well-off, but even a petty tradesman's kind ofexistence, unless our means of production can by some stroke of magicbe multiplied tenfold--on paper it can be done with ease--or unlessthe production value (not turnover), which an adult working-man canwith the utmost exertion bring into being in the course of a year doesnot many times exceed the average value of 2000 marks. 

No doubt the young folk of our big cities promise themselves a merrytime for six weeks when they have got power, the shops, the wardrobesand the wine-cellars into their hands. For the leaders, it may last alittle longer than for the rank-and-file. And then, for those of theformer who have any sense of honesty, will come a question ofconscience, which may be delayed by printing paper-money, but cannotbe solved by any appeal to the people. 

If Bolshevism were the contrary to what it is--if it were a success, athing not absolutely impossible in a peasant-State, we mightunderstand the self-assurance of those who, in opposition to ourforecast, expect everything from the will of the people, the Sovietsystem and the inspirations of the future. We do understand it in thecase of the drawing-room communists, and the profiteer-extremists whoare out not for the cause, but for power, and perhaps only formaterial objects. 

I know that by these observations I am favouring the cause of thosesorry dignitaries of a day, the Majority Socialists, but I cannot helpthat. The truth is not false because it favours one party, nor isfalsehood truth because it harms the other. The Socialism now inpower is doing the right thing, although it is doing it out ofignorance and helplessness--it is waiting, and getting steam up. It isbetter to do the right thing out of error than to do the wrong thingout of wisdom. Out of error: for besides omitting to do what ought notto be done it also omits the things it ought to do--among others, theintroduction of the New Economy. [8] It is like mankind before theFall; it does not know good from evil, what is useful and what isnoxious, what can be done and what cannot. Well--let it take its time;it shall have time enough. 

This time must be turned to good account. When we have come to the endof these observations we shall understand what a huge task liesbetween us and the realization of the new social order. In this casethe longest way round is the shortest way home. And even if Germanyshould choose the mountain road with its broad loops and windings, weshall stray often enough, and go backward now and then; while if, inimpatient revolt, we try to climb straight up, we shall slip downlower than where we started. Let us never forget how mysteriously oursocial and political immaturity seems to be bound up with our oncelofty and even now remarkable intellectuality and morality. [9] We havenot won our liberties, they have fallen into our laps; it was by thegeneral breakdown, by a strike, by a flight, that Germany and herformer rulers have parted company. These liberties, social andpolitical, are not rooted in the soil, they can hardly be said to beprized among the treasures of life, it is not their ideal, but theirmaterial side which attracts us. Those who used to shout Hurrah! nowcry "All power to the Soviets!" and the day will come when they willagain shout Hurrah! Then we shall witness a real sundering of ourdifferent visions of the world, visions now buried under a mass ofinterests and speculations. 

In any case, whether the change is to be catastrophic or evolutionary, the journey will be a long one, and every attempt to hurry it willonly prolong it further; it will throw us back for years, or it may bedecades. Above all things, we must know whither we are going. In orderto adapt ourselves to a new form of society we must know what it _may_look like, what it _ought_ to look like, and what it _will_ look like. We shall find that Germany is not going to be landed in an earthlyParadise, but in a world of toil, and one which for a long period willbe a world of poverty, of a penurious civilization and of adeeply-endangered culture. The unproved, parrot-phrases of a cheapUtopianism will grow dumb--those phrases which offer us entrance intothe usual Garden of Eden with its square-cut, machine-made culture andgaudy, standardized enjoyments--phrases which assure us that when wehave introduced the six-hours' working day and abolished privateproperty, the cinema horrors will be replaced by classical concerts, the gin-shops by popular reading-rooms, the gaming-hells by edifyinglectures, highway robberies by gymnastic exercises, detective novelsby Gottfried Keller, bazaar-trifles and comic vulgarities by works ofrefined handicraft; and that out of boxing contests, racecoursebetting, bomb exercises, and profiteering in butter, we shall see therise of an era of humility and philanthropy. 

In the Promised Land as we conceive it, the classes which are now thebearers of German culture will lose almost everything, while the gainof the proletariat will be scarcely visible. And yet for the sake ofthis scarcely visible gain we must tread the stony path that liesbefore us. Willingly and joyfully shall we tread it; for out of this, at first, dubious conquest of equal rights for all men will grow themight of justice, of human dignity, of human solidarity and unity. 

That is truly work for a century, and yet for that very reason thehard path will lead to its reward. We must learn to know it, and tounderstand that it is a path of sacrifice. We must not accept theinvitation of fools to a Christmas party--fools who will make thewelkin ring with their outcries when they find out theirself-deception. Let us tread our path of suffering with a pride whichdisdains to be consoled by illusions. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: By surplus-value (_Mehrwert_) the author means all thatis produced above and beyond the bare necessities of life. ]

[Footnote 7: _Die Neue Wirtschaft_, by Walther Rathenau (S. Fischer). In this brief study, Rathenau urges (1) the unification andstandardization of the whole of German industry and commerce in onegreat Trust, working under a State charter, and armed with veryextensive powers; and (2) a great intensification of the applicationof science and mechanism to production. ]

[Footnote 8: See p. 37, _note_. ]

[Footnote 9: Morality, _Sittlichkeit_, a word of broader meaning than"morality, " for it comprehends not only matters of ethical right andwrong, but the general temper and habit of mind of a people asexpressed in social life. ]

VI

In order to throw some light into the obscurity of that socialdreamland which no one seriously discusses because no one honestlybelieves in it, let us, as it were, cut out and examine a section fromthe fully socialized Germany of the future. Let us suppose thatcertain economic and social conditions have lasted for a generation orso, and have therefore become more or less stabilized. At a normalrate of progress this state of things should be reached about the endof this century. 

To begin with, let us make two very optimistic assumptions--first, that technical progress in Germany shall have developed to a point atwhich we are no longer impossibly outclassed and distanced by foreignnations, and, secondly, that by a timely and far-reaching reform ofeducation and culture (the lowest cost of which must be set down atabout three milliards of marks) the complete breakdown of civilisationmay be averted. This reform is one which must be taken in hand veryearly, for _after_ the event its adoption is improbable. A third, lessoptimistic but on that account more probable assumption may be addedto this--namely, that the Western countries shall have progressedtowards Socialism more steadily and therefore more slowly, and thatat the period of our comparison America shall find itself at the stageof State-Socialism, not of full socialization. We know that in makingthis assumption we are smoothing the way for attack to ourprofessional opponents, uncritical and self-interested, who with oneblast of the fanfare of world-revolution can scatter our furtherobservations to the winds. 

Full Socialism is characterized, as we have seen, by the abolition ofall incomes that are not worked for, and the fact that there are nomore rich. But this criterion must be limited in its application, forit can never be fully realized. 

According to the theory and the laws every one must hold someappointment and be paid for his work, or for not working. What he ispaid, however, he can at will utilize, or waste, or hoard up, or give, or gamble away, or destroy. He cannot invest it, or get interest on itor turn into capital, because these private undertakings or means ofproduction will no longer exist. 

Now each of these assumptions is so shaky that not only must triflingdivergences and shortcomings be winked at, but the meshes of thesystem are so wide that only a rough approximation to the ideal ispossible. 

It is true that every one can be made to hold some appointment and bepaid for some minimum of work, but no one can be prevented fromdevoting his leisure hours to some work of rare quality and turning itinto value for his own purposes. He can make himself useful bysubsidiary employment of an artistic, scientific or technicalcharacter, by rendering services or assistance of various kinds, byadvising, or entertaining, or acting as a guide to strangers, or goingon employment abroad, and no law can prevent him from turning hisservices into income even if he was merely paid in kind. Gaming andbetting will flourish and many will grow rich by them. A man who haslost his money and who has exhausted his rights to an advance from thepublic institutions for that object will have recourse to lenders whowill supply him with bread and meat and clothes, and who will makemoney by it. Similarly with people who are tempted to makeacquisitions beyond their standard remuneration. On every side weshall see private stores of goods of all kinds, which will take theplace of property as formerly understood. 

There will be an enormous temptation to smuggling and profiteeringwhich will reach a height far surpassing all scandals of the war andrevolution periods. Foreigners and their agents, who look after theexport trade "from Government to Government, " will help hoarders andsavers to turn their goods to account. Suppose citizens are attackedbecause their senseless expenditure is a mockery of their legalremuneration, they will say: I got this from friends--that I got byexchange--this came from abroad--my relatives in America sent me that. Law, control, terrorism, are effective just so long as there is not ablade of grass in the land--once remove the fear of hunger and theyare useless. Great properties will arise, drawing interest both abroadand at home, and they will grow by evasions and bribery. Theprofiteer, the true child of the "great days, " will not perish fromthe land, on the contrary, he will grow tougher the more he ispersecuted, he will be the rich man of the future, and he will form aconstant political danger if he and his fellows combine. 

So long as we have not acquired an entirely new mentality, one whichdetaches men from possessions, which points them towards the Law, which binds the passions, and sharpens the conscience, so long willthe principle of "No rich people and no workless income" have to becontracted into the formula, "There ought to be none. "

Without this profound alteration of mentality, even the legallyprescribed incomes will exhibit quite grotesque variations, and willadapt themselves to the rarity-value of special gifts, toindispensable qualities, to favouritism, with a crudity quite unknownto-day. A scarcity of Ministers, a Professor's nourishment, andsoldiers' supplies, will then as now be met according to the law ofsupply and demand. Consider what ten years' practice in the war forwages and strike-management, with the public in it as partisans, willbring with it in the way of favouritisms, celebrities, andindispensabilities. Popular jockeys, successful surgeons, managers ofsports' clubs, tenors, demimondaines, farce-writers and championathletes could, even to-day, if they were class-conscious and joinedtogether to exploit their opportunities, demand any income they liked. Even as a matter of practical political economy, the cinema-star (orwhatever may succeed her) will be able to prescribe to the Governmentwhat amount of adornments, drawn from Nature or Art, are necessary forher calling, and what standard of life she must maintain in order tokeep herself in the proper mood. 

Organizers, popular leaders, authors and artists will announce andenforce their demands to the full limit of their rarity-value. At aconsiderable distance below these come the acquired and more or lesstransferable powers and talents. The Russians for the first few monthsbelieved in a three-fold order of allowances, rising within a limit ofabout one to two. If the ideas now prevailing have not undergone aradical change, then we may, in the society of the future, look fordivergences of income in the limit of one to a thousand. 

Therefore the principle that there shall be no more rich people mustagain be substantially limited. We must say, "There will be peoplereceiving extraordinary incomes in kind to which must be added theclaims to personal service which these favoured persons will lay downas conditions of their work. "

In its external, arithmetical structure, the fabric of life and itsrequirements in the new order will resemble that of to-day far moreclosely than most of us imagine--on the other hand, the inward andpersonal constitution of man will be far more different. Already wecan observe the direction of the movement. 

Extravagance and luxury will continue to exist, and those who practiseit will be, as they are to-day, and more than to-day, the profiteers, the lucky ones, and the adventurers. Excessive wealth will be morerepulsive than it is now; whether it will be less valued depends uponthe state of public ethics, a topic which we shall have to considerlater. It is probable that in defiance of all legislation wealth willturn itself into expenditure and enjoyment more rapidly and morerecklessly than to-day. 

But the relics of middle-class well-being will by that time have beenconsumed; the families which for generations have visibly incorporatedthe German spirit will less than others contrive to secure specialadvantages by profiteering and evading the laws; as soon as theirmodest possessions are taxed away or consumed they will melt into thegeneral mass of needy people who will form the economic average of thefuture. 

The luxury which will exhibit itself in streets and houses will have adubious air; every one will know that there is something wrong withit, people will spy and denounce, and find to their disgust thatnothing can be proved; the well-off will be partly despised, partlyenvied; the question how to suppress evasions of the law will take upa good half of all public discussions, just as that of capitalism doesnow. The hateful sight of others' prosperity cannot, even at home, not to mention foreign countries, be withdrawn from the eyes of theneedy masses; capitalism will have merely acquired another name andother representatives. 

The fact that the average of more or less cultivated and responsiblefolk are plunged in poverty will not be accepted as the consequence ofan unalterable natural law, nor as a case of personal misfortune; itwill be set down to bad government, and the rising revolutionaryforces of the fifth, sixth and seventh classes will nourish theprevailing discontent in favour of a new revolt. For the greateruniformity of the average way of life and its general neediness willnot in itself abolish the division of classes. I have already oftenenough pointed out that no mechanical arrangements can avail us here. 

At first there will be three, or more probably four classes who, inspite of poverty, will not dissolve in the masses, and who, throughtheir coherence and their intellectual heritage are by no meanswithout power. The Bolshevist plan of simply killing them out will notbe possible in Germany, they are relatively too numerous; persecutionwill weld them closer together, and their traditional experiences, habits of mind, and capacity, will make it necessary to have recourseto them and employ them again and again. 

The first of these classes is that of the feudal nobility. Theirancient names cannot be rooted out of the history of Germany, and evenin their poverty the bearers of these names will be respected--allthe more if, as we may certainly assume, they maintain the effects oftheir bodily discipline, and the visible tradition of certain forms oflife and thought. They will be strengthened by their mutualassociation, their relationship with foreign nobility will give themimportant functions in diplomacy; these are two elements which theyhave in common with Catholicism and Judaism. They will retain theirinclination and aptitude for the calling of arms and foradministration; their reactionary sentiments will lead now to success, now to failure, and by both the inner coherence of the class will befortified. Finally, the inevitable reversion to an appreciation of theromantic values of life will make a connexion with names of ancientlineage desirable to the leading classes, and especially to thearistocracy of officialism. 

This aristocracy of officialism forms the second of the new stratawhich will come to light. The first office-bearers of the new era, betheir achievements great or small, are not to be forgotten. Theirdescendants are respected as the bearers of well-known names; in theirfamilies the practice of politics, the knowledge of persons andconnexions are perpetuated; fathers, in their lifetime, look after theinterests of sons and daughters and launch them on the same path. Fromthese, and from the first stratum, the representatives of Germany inforeign lands are chosen, and in this way a certain familiarity withinternational life and society will be maintained. They will have theprovision necessary for their position abroad, and will also findways and means to keep up a higher standard of life at home. Personsin possession of irregular means of well-being will offer a great dealto establish connexions with these circles, which control so manylevers in the machine of State. 

The third group consists of the descendants of what was once theleading class in culture and in economics. Here we find a spiritsimilar to that of the refugees, _émigrés_ and Huguenots of the past. The lower they sink in external power, the more tenaciously they holdto their memories. Every family knows every other and cherishes thelustre of its name, a lustre augmented by legendary recollections, allthe more when the achievements of their class are ostentatiouslyignored in the new social order. People spare and save to the lastextremity in order to preserve and hand down some heirloom--a musicalinstrument, a library, a manuscript, a picture or two. A puritanicalthrift is exercised in order, as far as possible, to maintaineducation, culture and intellectuality on the old level; to this classculture, refinement of life as an end in itself, the practice ofreligion, classical music, and artistic feeling will fly for refuge. No other class understands this one; it holds itself aloof, it looksdifferent from the rest in its occupations, its habits, its garb andits forms of life. It supplies the new order with its scholars, itsclergy, its higher teaching power, its representatives of the mostdisinterested and intellectual callings. Like the monasteries of theMiddle Ages, it forms an island of the past. Its influence rises andfalls periodically, according to the current ideas of the time, butits position is assured by its voluntary sacrifices, by its knowledgeand by the purity of its motives. 

A fourth inexpugnable and influential stratum will in all probabilitybe formed by the middle-class landowners and the substantial peasants. Even though the socialization of the land should be radically carriedthrough--which is not likely to be the case--it will remain on paper. A class of what may be called State-tenants, estate-managers, orleaders of co-operative organizations will very much resemble alandowning class. Its traditional experience and the ties that bind itto the soil make it a closed and well-defined body, self-conscious andmasterful through the importance of its calling, its indispensabilityand its individualism. It suffers no dictation as regards its mannerof life. Here we shall see the conservative traditions of the countrystrongly mustered for defence, incapable of being eliminated as apolitical force, and forming a counterpoise to the radical democracyof the towns. 

Everywhere we find a state of strain and of cleavage. Thesingle-stratum condition of society cannot be reached without aprofound inward change; politics are still stirred and shaken byconflicts, and society by the strife of classes. A very differentpicture from the promised Utopian Paradise of a common feeding-groundfor lions and sheep!

We are all aggrieved by the illegal opulence of the profiteers, but weare all liable to the infection. The feudalistic Fronde awaits itsopportunity. The aristocracy of office endeavours to monopolize theState-machine. The _émigrés_ of culture find themselves looked askanceat, on suspicion of intellectual arrogance, and they insist that thecountry cannot get on without them. The agriculturalists are feared, when they show a tendency to revolt against the towns. The rulingclass, that is to say the more or less educated masses of thecity-democracy, looks in impatient discontent for the state of generalwell-being which refuses to be realized, lays the blame alternately onthe four powerful strata and on the profiteers, and fights now thisgroup now that, for better conditions of living. 

But the conditions of living do not improve--they get worse. The levelof the nation's output has been sinking from the first day of theRevolution onwards. The absolute productivity of work, the relativeefficacy and the quality of the product, have all deteriorated. With asmaller turnover we have witnessed a falling-off in the excellence ofthe goods, in research-work, and in finish. Industrial plant has beenworked to death and has not yet recovered. Auxiliary industries, accessories and raw materials have fallen back. High-qualityworkmanship has suffered from defective schooling, youthfulindiscipline and the loss of manual dexterity. The new social orderhas lost a generation of leaders in technique, scholarship andeconomics. Universities, with all institutions of research andeducation, have suffered from this blank. Technical leadership isgone, and the deterioration in quality has reacted detrimentally onoutput. We can now turn out nothing except what is cheap and easy, andwhat can be produced without traditional skill of hand, withoutserious calculation and research. For all innovations, all work ofsuperior quality, Germany is dependent on the foreigner. Theatmosphere of technique has vanished, and the stamp of cheap hirelinglabour is on the whole output of the country. 

In the weeks of the Revolution street orators used to tell us thatfive hundred Russian professors had signed a statement that the levelof culture had never been so high as under Bolshevism. And Berlinbelieved them! To educate Russia it would take, to begin with, amillion elementary schools with a yearly budget of several dozenmilliards of roubles, and a corresponding number of higher schools anduniversities: if every educated Russian for the next twenty years wereto become a teacher, there would not be enough of them--not to speakof the requirements of transport, of raw materials and of agriculture. The fabric of a civilization and a culture cannot be annihilated atone blow, nor can it grow up save in decades and centuries. Themaintenance of the structure demands unceasing toil and unbrokentradition; the breach that has been made in it in Germany can only behealed by the application in manifold forms of work, intellect andwill; and this hope we cannot entertain. [10]

But we have not yet done with the question of social strata and inwardcleavage. Revolutionary threats are causing strife every day. Revolution against revolution--how is this possible? We are notspeaking of a reactionary revolution but of the "activist. "

In an earlier work I discussed the theory of continuousrevolution. [11] Behind every successful revolutionary movement therestands another, representing one negation more than its predecessor. Behind the revolt of the aristocracy stood that of the bourgeoisie, behind that of the bourgeoisie stood Socialism. Behind the now rulingfourth class[12] rises the fifth, and a sixth is coming into sight. Ifa ninth should represent pure Anarchism, we may see an eleventhproclaiming a dictatorship, and a twelfth standing for absolutemonarchy. 

To-day the Majority Socialists are in power, that is to say the Rightsection of the fourth class. This is composed of the older, trainedand work-willing Trade Unionists, who are amazed at the Revolution, who do not regard it as quite legitimate, but who are determined to defendthe _status quo_ in so far as a certain degree of self-determinationand elbow-room in the material conditions of life still remain to them. 

The Left section consists of youths and of persons disgusted withmilitarism, ignorant of affairs but cherishing a certain independenceof judgment; still ready for work but equally so for politics. Tothese, as a "forward" party, the doctrinaire theorists have alliedthemselves. The designation of the party "The Independents" ischaracteristic; its goal, "All power to the Soviets, " is a catchwordfrom Russia. 

A fifth class is now emerging--the work-shy. The others call them thetramp-proletariat, the disgruntled, the declassed, who set their hopeson disorder. Their goal is still undetermined--their favouriteexpression is "bloodhound, " when those in power, or Government troops, are referred to. 

Then comes the sixth class, still partly identified with the Left ofthe fourth and embryonically attached to the fifth. These are theindomitable loafers and shirkers, physically and mentally unsound, aliens in the social order, excluded by their sufferings, theirpunishments, their vices and passions; self-excluded, repudiators oflaw and morality, born of the cruelty of the city, pitiable beings, not so much cast out of society as cast up against it, as a livingreproach to its mechanical organization. If these ever come into thelight in politics, they will demand a kind of syndicalisticcommunism. 

That is as far as we can see at present into the as yet unopened germsof continuous revolutionary movement. In these are contained theinfinite series of all principles that can conceivably be supported;and it would be wholly false to see in this series merely so manysuccessive steps in moral degeneration, even though the earlier stagesshould proceed on a flat denial of ethical principles. Later on willcome revivals and restorations, political, ethical and religious, andeach time we shall see the rising stratum attaching to itself straysand converts, above all, the disappointed and ambitious, from thosethat went before. 

But the number of revolutions will grow till we lose count of them, and each, however strenuously it may profess its horror of bloodshed, will have only one hope and possibility: that of defending itself byarmed force against its successor. The game is a grotesquely dishonestone, because every aspirant movement will cast against its forerunnerthe charge of ruling by bloodshed, while it itself is alreadypreparing its armed forces for the conflict. 

It is therefore wholly vain to hope that an advanced socialorganization implies stability, that a brotherhood mechanicallydecreed will exclude further revolutions, and will establish eternallyan empire of righteousness and justice according to any preconceivedpattern. 

The fiercest hatred will prevail amongst those who are most closelyassociated--for instance, between handworkers and brainworkers, between leaders and followers; and this hate will be all the moreinappeasable when it is open to every one to rise in the world, andnone can cherish the excuse that he is the victim of a social systemof overwhelming power. To-day this hatred is masked by the generalclass-hatred--hatred of the monopolists of culture, of position and ofcapital. 

At the bottom of it, however, lies even to-day the more universalhatred of the defeated for the victor, and when those three monopolieshave fallen, it will emerge in its original Cain-like form. It cannotbe appeased by any mechanical device. Human inequality can never beabolished, human accomplishment and work will always vary, and thehuman passion for success will always assert itself. 

We have discussed the material foundation and the stratification ofthe German people when full socialization has been realized. Let usnow forecast the manner of their existence. 

The future community is poor; the individual is poor. The averagestandard of well-being corresponds, at best, to what in peace-time onewould expect from an income of 3000 marks. [13] But the requirements ofthe population are not mediævally simplified--they could not be, inview of the density of the population and the complexity of industrialand professional vocations. They are manifold and diverse, and theyare moreover intensified by the spectacle of extravagance offered bythe profiteering class and the licence of social life. The traditionalgarden-city idyll of architects and art-craftsmen is a Utopia about asmuch like reality as the pastoral Arcadianism of Marie Antoinette. 

All things of common use are standardized into typical forms. It mustnot be supposed, however, that they are based on pure designs andmodels. The taste of the artist will clash with that of the crowd, andsince the former has no authority to back him he will have tocompromise. The compromise, however, consists in cheap imitation offoreign models, for in foreign countries art-industry will exist, andno legislation can prevent its products from finding their way (inreproductions or actual examples) into Germany and being admiredthere. Our half or wholly imitative products are turned out as cheaplyas possible, in substitute-materials, and are made as well or as illas the relics of our craftsmanship permit, or as our existingmachinery for the purpose is capable of. Cheapness and ease ofmanufacture are the principles aimed at, for even with narrow means noone will want to do without certain things; fashions still prevail, and will have to be satisfied with things that do not last, but can beconstantly changed. 

How far will a new system of education tend to simplify the needs ofmen and women and to purify their taste? Probably very little, forgood models will be lacking, poverty is not fastidious, and the tasteof the populace is the sovereign arbiter. But on this taste it dependswhether vulgar ornaments and gewgaws, frivolities and bazaar-horrors, are to satisfy the desires of the soul. 

Objects of earlier art and industry have been alienated through needof money or destroyed by negligence. Here and there one may find anold cup or an engraving, as we do to-day in plundered territories, butthese things are disconnected specimens; all they can do isoccasionally to interest an artist. Whoever wants to procure someobject or to get something done which has not been standardized in thecommon range of approved requirements must gain it by a tedious courseof pinching and saving. Personal possessions in the way of books, musical instruments, works of art, as well as travel outside theprescribed routes are rarities; a tree of one's own, a horse of one'sown are legendary things. 

Thus luxury in its better aspect has gone to ruin quicker than in thebad. All outlay devoted to culture, to beauty, to invigoration hasdried up; all that survives is what stimulates, what depraves andbefouls; frivolities, substitutes and swindles. What we have arrivedat is not the four-square simplicity of the peasant-homestead, but aramshackle city suburb. To some of us it is not easy, and to many itis not agreeable to picture to themselves the aspect of a thoroughlyproletarianized country, and the difficulty lies in the fact that thepopular mind has, as it were by universal agreement, resolved toconceive the future on a basis of domestic prosperity about tenfold asgreat as it can possibly be. The leaders and office-holders of theproletariat have an easy task in convincing themselves and others thatwhat they approve and are struggling for is the so-called middle-classexistence with all the refinement and claims of historic culture. Tacitly, as a matter of course, they accept what plutocracy has togive them, and imagine that the loans they take up from thecivilization and culture of the past can be redeemed from the socialgains of the future. 

The stages at which a nation arrives year by year, can be estimated byits building. In the new order, little is being built. Apart fromcertain perfunctory garden-cities, which are being erected for theprinciple of the thing, to meet the needs of a few thousand favouredhouseholds, and which perhaps will never be finished, we will fordecades have to content ourselves with new subdivisions andexploitation of the old buildings; old palaces packed to the roof withfamilies, will stand in the midst of vegetable gardens and willalternate with empty warehouses in the midst of decayed cities. In thestreets of the suburbs the avenues of trees will be felled, and in thecities grass will grow through the cracks of the pavement. 

For a long time it used to be believed that the passion of thelandscape painters of the seventeenth century for introducing ruinswith hovels nestling among them arose from a feeling for romance. This is not so--they only painted what they saw around them after theravages of the Thirty Years' War. It must not be supposed, however, that the forecast in these pages is based on the consequences of thewar; these no doubt must darken our picture of the future; but theshadows, which I have put in as sparingly as I could, are essentiallythe expression of a greatly reduced economic efficiency, combined withthe uniformity produced by the general proletarianization of life withthe absence of any correcting factor in individual effort of arational character and of the influence of higher types. 

A brighter trait in the material conditions of life will be formed byeffort of a collective character, such as even the most penuriouscommunity may be able to undertake. The more severely the domestichousehold has to pinch, and the more unattractive it thereby becomes, the more completely will life be forced into publicity. Private claimsand aspirations, which cannot be satisfied, will be turned over to thepublic. Men will gather in the streets and places of public resort, and have more mutual intercourse than before, since every transactionof life, even the most insignificant, will have to be a subject ofdiscussion, agreement and understanding. In all the arrangements ofsocial life, _e. G. _ for news, communications, supplies, discussion andentertainment, and demands will be made and complied with for greaterconvenience and comprehensiveness, for popular æsthetics and popularrepresentation. In these arrangements and in these alone Art willhave to find its functions and its home. Public buildings, gardens, sanatoriums, means of transit and exhibitions will be established atgreat cost. All the demands of the spirit and of the senses will seektheir satisfaction in public. There will be no lack of popularperformances, excursions, tours and conducted visits to collections;of clubs, libraries, athletic meetings and displays. The aspect ofthis tendency from the point of view of culture and ethics we havestill to consider; in its social aspect (apart from the fact that itcauses a vacuum in the home and forces young people to the surface oflife, and in spite of its mechanical effect) it will act as acomforting reminiscence of the civic commonalty and solidarity ofmediæval times. 

In considering the spiritual and cultural life of a fully socializedsociety, we have to start with the assumption that any one man'sopinion and decision are as good as another's. Authority, even inmatters of the highest intellectual or spiritual character, onlyexists in so far as it is established, acknowledged and confirmedeither by direct action of the people's will, or indirectly throughtheir representatives. Every one's education and way of life are muchthe same; there are no secrecies, no vague authority attaching tospecial vocations; no one permits himself to feel impressed by anyperson or thing. Every one votes, whether it be for an office, amemorial, a law, or a drama, or does it through delegates or thedelegates of delegates. Every one is determined to know the how andwhere and why of everything--just as to-day in America--and demands aplausible reason for it. The reply, "This is a matter you don'tunderstand, " is impossible. 

Everything is referred to one's own conscience, one's ownintelligence, one's own taste, and no one admits any innate oracquired superiority in others. In debate, the boundaries between theideal and the practicable are obliterated; for on the one hand everyone is too much preoccupied with material needs, and on the other, tooconfident, too unaccustomed to submit himself to what in former dayswas called a deeper insight, too loosely brought up to let himself betaught. We never, therefore, hear such judgments as: This, although itis difficult, is a book to be read; this drama ought to have beenproduced although it is not sensational; I don't myself care for thismemorial, but it must remain because a great artist made it; this is anecessary branch of study, although it has no practical application; Iwill vote for this man on account of his character and ability, although he has made no election-promises. On the other hand, thefollowing kind of argument will have weight: This historic buildingmust be demolished, for it interferes with traffic; this collectionmust be sold, for we need money; we need no chair of philosophy, butwe do need one for cinema-technique; these ornamental grounds are thevery place for a merry-go-round; tragedies are depressing, they mustnot be performed in the State theatres. Let us recall certain oversealegislation--carried out, be it noted in countries still swayed by thetraditional influence of culture--and these examples will not seemexaggerated. 

Where there is no appeal to authority, where none need feardisapproval or ridicule, where convenience is prized and thrift rulessupreme, there thought and decision will be short-breathed, and willnever look beyond the needs of the day. Who will then care for far-offdeductions, for wide arcs of thought? Calculation comes to the front, everything unpractical is despised; opinions are formed by discussion, everyday reading and propaganda. Men demand proofs, success, visiblereturns. The fewer the aims, the stronger will be their attraction. People are tolerant, for they are used to hearing the most variedopinions, and all opinions have followers, from the water-cure toTâoism; but the only opinion of any influence is that whose followersare many. 

Public opinion settles everything. The champions of absolute valueshave to accommodate themselves to the law of competition. Religiousteaching has to seek the favour of the times by the same methods as anew system of physical culture. A work of art must compete for votes. Only by popularity-hunting can anything come to life; there will be nodoing without much talking. As in the later days of Greece, rhetoricand dialectic are the most powerful of the arts. 

And since manual labour cherishes silently or openly a bitter grudgeagainst intellectual labour, the latter has to protect itself by apretence of sturdy simplicity; when two teachers are competing for thehead-mastership of a classical school each tries to prove that he hasthe hornier hand. 

Most things in this new order are decided by weight of numbers. Advertisement and propaganda are banished from socialized industry andcommerce; instead, they compete in the service of personal and idealaims--in elections, theatres, systems of medicine, superstitions, arts, appointments, professorships, churches. 

Art has for the third time changed its master--after the princes, Mæcenas, the middle-class market; after Mæcenas, the plebs, and exporttrade. Whether by means of representation through gilds, bycompulsion, by patronage, or by favour, Art has become dependent; itmust explain, exhort, contend; it can no longer rest proudly onitself. It must aim at getting a majority on its side, and this it canonly do by sensationalism. Like all other features of intellectuallife, it must march with the times. Like all technique, research, learning and handicraft it suffers through the loss, for severalgenerations, of tradition and hereditary skill, but together with thisdrop there is also a drop in the character of the demand; quality hasgiven way to actuality. [14]

Certain reactions based on practical experience are not excluded;the constant comparison with the past and with foreign countries willshow the value of the cultivation of a science, of an art which has nofixed prepossessions and serves no immediate aims. Measures are taken, though without much conviction, by free Academies or the like, to winback something of this; but the atmosphere is not favourable to suchattempts, and an artificial and sterile discipline is all that canresult. 

The general tone is that of an excitable, loquacious generation, benton actualities and matters of practical calculation, fonder of debatethan of work, not impressed by any authority, prizing success, watching all that goes on abroad, taking refuge in public from thesordidness of private life, and passionately hostile to allsuperiority. Through the constant secession of elements to which thistone is antipathetic a kind of natural selection is constantly takingplace, and the political defencelessness of the transition periodfavours disintegrating tendencies of foreign origin. The carving awayof ancient German territories works in the same direction. Apart fromthe varying influence of the four strata already referred to, thegeneral tone will be set by the half-Slavonic lower classes of Middleand North Germany, who have brought about and who control the existingconditions, and by the other elements which have been assimilated tothese. 

In place of German culture and German intellectuality we have a stateof things of which a foretaste already exists in parts of America andof Eastern Europe. The fully socialized order, repelling all tutelagethrough those strata which possess a special tradition, outlook andmentality, has created its own form of civilization. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 10: Rathenau means that it cannot be entertained except onthe hypothesis of the profound _inward_ change, which is to bediscussed later on. ]

[Footnote 11: _Kritik der dreifachen Revolution. _ S. Fischer. ]

[Footnote 12: The classes referred to are (1) the old aristocracy, (2)the aristocracy of officialism, (3) that of traditional middle-classculture; (4) the mass of what is called Socialism. ]

[Footnote 13: £150 in pre-war values. By thrift, by co-operation, andby the cheapness of the public services generally, a surprisingly highstandard of life could be maintained on this kind of income in pre-warGermany. ]

[Footnote 14: Aktualität; as, for instance, reference to currenttopics. ]

VII

Thoughtful and competent judges to whom I have submitted the foregoingsection of my work have said to me: This is Hell. That is perhapsgoing too far, since those who will live in that generation and whohave themselves helped it into being will have become more or lessadapted to their circumstances. 

A large part of the proletariat of to-day will certainly not bedaunted by the prospect, but will regard it as a distinct improvementon their present situation. That is the terrible fact, a fact forwhich we are responsible and for which we must atone, with what ruinto German culture remains to be seen. 

Who, in this Age of Mechanism, who on the side of the bourgeoisie, whoof our statesmen, our professors, our captains of industry, above allwho of our clergy, has pitied the lot of the working-man? Thestatesmen, for peace' sake, worked out the Insurance Laws; theprofessors, with their emphatic dislike to the world of finance andtheir unemphasized devotion to the monopoly of their own stipends, preached a doctrinaire socialism; the clergy lauded thedivinely-appointed principle of subordination; the greatindustrialists, wallowing in their own greed for power, money, favour, titles and connexions, scolded the workers for wanting anything. Thesilent subjugation of our brothers was assured through the laws ofinheritance, our leaders put the socialistic legislation in fetters, freedom of combination was thwarted, electoral reform in Prussia wasscornfully denied, demands for better conditions of living, conditionswhich to-day we think ridiculously low, were suppressed by force. Andall the time, the cost of a single year of war, a tiny fraction of thewar-reparations, would have sufficed to banish want for ever from theland. At last the millions of the defenceless and disappointed weredriven into that war of the dynasties and the bourgeois, which wasunloosed by the folly of years, the dazzlement of weeks, thehelplessness of hours. 

If the state of things I have foreseen is hell, then we have earnedhell. And it ill becomes us to wrap ourselves in the superiority ofour culture, to rebuke the masses for their want of intellect, theirwant of character, their greed, and to keep insisting on theunchangeability of human character, on the virtues of rulership andleadership, on the spiritual unselfishness and intellectual priesthoodof the classes born to freedom. Where was this heaven-nurturedpriestly virtue sleeping when Wrong straddled the land and the greatcrime was wrought? It was composing feeble anthologies and pompoustheories, cooking its culture-soup, confusing, with true professorialwant of instinct, 1913 with 1813[15]--and putting itself at thedisposition of the Press Bureau. _That_ was the hour in which to fightfor the supremacy of the spirit. Now romance comes, as it always does, too late. 

What is romance in history? It is sterility. It is incapacity toimagine, still less to shape, the yet unknown. It is an inordinatecapacity for flinging oneself with feminine adaptability into anythingthat is historically presented and accomplished--from Michael Angeloto working samplers. Fearing the ugly present and the anxious future, the romantic takes refuge with the dear good dead people, and spinsout further what it has learned from them. But every big man was ashaper of his own time, a respecter of antiquity and conscious of hisinheritance as a grown and capable man may be; not a youth insheltered tutelage, but a master of the living world, and a herald ofthe future. "Modernity" is foolish, but antiquarianism is rubbish;life in its vigour is neither new nor antique, but young. 

True it is indeed that we love the old, many-coloured, concrete, pre-mechanistic world; we cannot take an antique thing in our hands orread an antique word without feeling its enchantment. It is a joy tothe heart, and one prohibited to no man, to dream at times romanticdreams, to live in the past, and to forget, as we do it, that thisvery dreaming, this very life, owes its charm to the fact that weare of another age. It is a magic like that of childhood--but to wantto go back to it is not only childish, but a deliberate fraud andself-deception. We should realize, as I have shown years ago, that thedifference of our age from that age is the ever-present fact of thedensity of our population. Any one who wants to go back, really wantsthat forty million Germans should die, while he survives. It isignorant, it is insincere, to put on a frown of offended virtue and tosay: For shame, what are you thronging into the towns for? Go back tothe land; plough, spin, weave, ply the blacksmith's hammer, as did ourforefathers, who were the proper sort of people. And leave the peoplelike us, who think and write poetry and brood and dream for you, ahouse embowered in vines--there will be room enough for that!--Ah, youthinkers and brooders, what would you say if men answered you: No! Goyourself and spin in a factory, for you have shown clearly enough thatyour thinking and brooding are futile. All your fine phrases amount tonothing but the one dread monosyllable--Die! Are you so wicked asthat, and know it? or so stupid, and know it not?

Thought is the most responsible of all functions. He who thinks forothers must look after them, and if they live he may not slay them. Itis therefore a mischievous piece of romantic folly to point us to thepast. We must all pass through the dark gateway, and the sage has noright to growl: Leave me out--I am the salt of the earth! The firstthing we have to do is to save humanity; not a selected pair in theArk but the whole race, criminals and harlots, fools, beggars andcripples. We ourselves have cast down Authority, and there will be acrush, and many things will look very different from what the sageswould wish and what the romantics dream. And if it is going to be hellfor people like you and me, we must only accept it in the name ofjustice, and think of Dante's terrible inscription: "I was made by theMight of God, by the supreme Wisdom and by the primal Love. "[16]

But is it hell? That depends on ourselves. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 15: In 1913 all Germany was celebrating with great pomp andwarlike display the centenary of the liberation of the country fromNapoleon, and also paying a huge property tax for the coming war. ]

[Footnote 16:

_Fecemi la divina PotestateLa somma Sapienza e il primo Amore. _

This is part of the inscription over the gates of Hell in the_Inferno_, Canto III. ]

VIII

Our description of the future order of society was tacitly based onthe assumption that our mentality, our ethics, our spiritual outlook, would remain as they are at present. 

This assumption is a probable one, but it is not irrevocably certain. What we have endeavoured to demonstrate is simply the obviousfact--the fact which our once so rigid but, since November, 1918, uprooted and flaccid intellectualism has forgotten--that our salvationis not to be found in any kind of mechanical apparatus orinstitutions. Institutions do not mean evolution. If institutions runtoo far ahead of evolution there will be reaction. When evolution runstoo far, there is revolution. 

At this point both groups of our opponents will start up against us. 

The Radicals cry: Ha! only give us food, give "all power to theSoviets, " let us have free-thought lectures, and mentality, insight, experience and culture will come of themselves. 

The Reactionaries smile: Ho! this man has never learned that there isno such thing as evolution; that human character never changes. 

I shall not answer either of these. They know, both of them, that theyare saying what is not true. 

Something of unprecedented greatness can and must take place;something that in the life of a people corresponds to the awakening ofmanhood in the individual. 

In every conscious existence there comes a moment when the livingbeing is no longer determined but begins to determine himself; when hetakes over responsibility from the surrounding Powers, in order toshoulder it for himself; when he no longer accepts the forces thatguide him, but creates them; when he no longer receives but freelychooses the values, ideals, aims and authorities whose validity hewill admit; when he begets out of his own being the relations with thedivine which he means to serve. For the German people this moment, this opportunity, has now arrived--or is for ever lost. 

We have made a clear sweep of all authorities. The inheritedinfluences which we accepted unconsciously have dropped away fromus--persons, classes, dogmas. The persons are done with for thepresent. The classes, even though they may still keep up the struggle, are broken to pieces together with all the best that they contained:mentality, sense of honour, devotion, training, tradition. We cannever reanimate them and never supply their place. Ideas and dogmashave long ago lost their cogency; the power they wielded throughpolice and school, the power which we tried to prop up by ablasphemous degradation of religion and by developing the church as akind of factory, is gone, and it would be a piece of mechanicalpresumption to suppose that we can breed them again for the sake ofthe objects they fulfilled. If we live and thrive, ideas and faithswill grow up of themselves. 

We must of our own free choice lay upon ourselves a certainlife-potency or faculty which we shall freely obey, and which shall beso broad and so buoyant that thought and creation can grow out of it. A deed without precedent only in its voluntary, consciousself-determination: for other peoples in earlier days also acceptedthese faculties, not indeed out of conscious choice, but from thehands of prophets, rulers and classes. Thus theocracy was laid uponIsrael; the caste-system on the Indians; the idea of the city on theGreeks; empire on the Romans; the Church on the Middle Ages; commerce, plutocracy, colonial dominion, on the modern world; militarism onGermany. For these imposed forces men lived and died; they had only amythical conception of where they came from, and they believed andsome still believe them to be everlasting. 

A thunder-stroke of destiny has at once stripped us bare and hasopened our eyes. The tremendous choice is before us. Are we to rejectit, and, blinded anew, to resign ourselves to the casual andmechanical laws of action and reaction, of needs and interests, andthe competition of forces? Are we to recover ourselves, and enter intothe intellectual arena of the nations, to begin a new and enduringlife with no other guiding thought than that of self-preservation andthe division of property? In the harbour of the nations is our ship todrift aimlessly while every other knows its course, whether to a nearor distant port? Is that penurious Paradise which we have described, the goal of Germany's hopes and struggles?

Compared with us, the French movement of the eighteenth century had aneasy task. All it had to do was to deny and demolish. When it hadcleared away the wreckage of feudalism, at once a strong new class, the bourgeoisie, sprang up from the soil, more vigorous than itsaristocratic forerunner, and it was able to take care of itself. Andthe bourgeoisie was also a class of defined boundaries, and alreadytrained for its task; it had long ago taken over French culture, italone had for a century been the champion of French ideas, it hadacquired enthusiasm for the nation, for freedom, for militarism andfor money; the aspirations for equality and fraternity were not indeedfulfilled, but the first mechanized and plutocratic state of theContinent came into being. 

Germany, as we have seen, is not in the same position. When we arestripped we find no new stratum of culture growing up below thesurface; society is simply dissolved, and in its place we find themasses, of which the most hopeful thing we can say is that they are anordered body. Tradition has been torn in two. No--we have to buildfrom the foundations up. But whether we shall build according to thechanging needs of the seasons, according to the casual balance offorces, or according to an idea and a symbol--that is the question!

Our current Socialism has no qualms about bringing new nations tobirth with the aid of a few simple apparatus and radical eliminations;it believes that the right spirit will soon enter in if onlyinstitutions are provided for it. It would be too severe to describethis way of thinking solely as contempt for or want of understandingof a spiritual mission. Socialism in its prevailing form arises indeedsimply from material or so-called "scientific" conceptions (as ifthere could be a science of ideal aims and values): but it has, thoughonly as a secondary object, annexed to itself the values of aspiritual faith--the latter are, as the language of the market has it, "thrown in. " We have seen to what the material domination ofinstitutions and apparatus is leading us. To national dignity, or toany mission for humanity, it does not lead. 

What is unprecedented in our problem is not, as we have said, that apeople should beget out of itself its own idea and mission. From theJewish theocracy to the French rationalism, from the Chineseancestor-worship to the pioneer-freedom of America, all the culturedpeoples have brought this creative act to pass, although in formativeepochs leading classes and leading men have born the responsibilityand made it easy for their countrymen to become aware of their ownunconscious spirit, and through this awareness and consciousness toisolate and intensify it. 

What is unprecedented is just this: that the process should take placeas a deliberate act of will, in democratic freedom, without pressureand compulsion of authority, in the consciousness of its necessity, onour own responsibility. Germany is not at present growing leaders andprophets, we are not in a formative stage, all authority has beenscattered to the winds. It is true that we have one stratum of societywhich is capable of understanding the meaning of the task, but it isdeeply cloven, the hatreds and interests of its parties make them moreeach other's enemies than the people's. 

And yet it is this very class--not as possessor of means but aspossessor of the tradition, which is capable, which is indispensable, and which is summoned to take in hand the transformation of the Germanspirit, to free it from the bonds of mechanism, of capitalism, ofmilitarism, and to lead it to its true destinies. It cannot do thisfor itself alone, amid the blind bitterness of the war of classes; itcannot do it as a sovran leader relying on its deeper insight, for itsand every other prestige has gone by the board; it can only do it bythe way of service and sacrifice--it can only do it if the service andthe sacrifice are approved and accepted. 

The masses will not understand this sacrifice of service; but the moreresponsible of their leaders will. Not to-day, indeed, nor to-morrow;but on the day when experience has shown them that I am telling thetruth. At first they will do as in Russia; when want becomes acute, they will seek to buy experience and tradition at a high price fromindividuals. But mentality and spirit cannot be bought--only labourand dexterity. Then gradually men will come to understand that thehighest things are not marketable commodities, they are only givenaway. And at last the responsible leaders, those who rule in order toserve, will separate themselves from those of the Cataline type, whoserve in order to rule. 

So long has the narrow, parsonical, cynical contempt for theunderstanding of the lower classes prevailed--through our fault--areversal to blind worship of the masses, of the immature and theunsuccessful, is not inexcusable. We are here to love mankind--allmankind, the outcast as well as the weak--every man and all men. Butthe masses are not quite the same thing as mankind. The masses whocongregate in the streets and at public meetings are not communitiesconsisting of whole men, but assemblages in which each man takes apart and is present, indeed, with his whole body, but by no means withhis whole being. The masses are absent-minded; and presence of mindonly comes to them when through the lips of some true prophet theSpirit descends upon them. But when that happens, they take nodecisions; they do not get beside themselves; rather, they sink intothemselves. Before the distortions of a mob orator, with hisextravagant promises, the masses become merely a driven crowd eagerfor gain, not human souls. They are the concave reflector of passionsand greeds that rage in the focal point of the speaker's rostrum; theyreturn in concentrated form the rays that dazzle them. He who puts themasses in the judgment-seat, who looks for counsel and decision attheir hands, has neither reverence nor love for man. Sooner or laterthe truth of this will be realized by all honourable men among theirleaders. 

The day is also far when the upper classes will come to their senses. They have never understood what the world is, nor what Germany is, norwhat has happened to themselves. They see houses and fields, streetsand trees very much as they were; they think, if they only play thegame a little craftily at the beginning, everything will remain as itused to be, and they will come out all right in the end. It is just aswhen some merchant goes bankrupt for a million; for the firstfortnight the servants wait at table as usual and the family eat offsilver plate; the ruin is still on paper. But in a year's timeeverything is dispersed to the winds, and men have changed along withtheir utensils. When one sees for what trivialities people arefighting to-day one begins to understand how callously and shamelesslythey gave up a thousand times over that which they had sworn to defendwith the last drop of their blood; then none of them know what hasreally happened. In a few years' time they will know; and then theywill fight no more for things that no longer exist; they will bemeditating a general sacrifice to save what can still be saved, andwhat is worth saving. 

IX

Germany is a land without power, without poise, with its prosperityshattered, its authorities and its external aims annihilated, itsintellect and its ethics at a low ebb. In such a condition, if we wishto understand the only kind of life-faculty which can save us fromintellectual and spiritual death, give us force and inspiration toshape for ourselves and for the world the new social order of freedom, spirituality[17] and justice, and in the true sense to "save" us, wemust look ourselves and the German character in the face--thisunknown, problematic character, which for a century in contradictionto its own inmost being, has been flattering and lulling itself withhackneyed and complacent phrases and unproved judgments. For we canundertake nothing and claim nothing which has not its prototype in ourown soul and is not founded in our own past, our own traditions. 

There is no people, not even the French, which in recent decades hasadministered to itself and digested so much praise as we have. Wenever discussed ourselves but at once the stereotyped toasts began. The more German culture declined, the more disgusting became ourbabble about it. 

The persons through whose mouths we let ourselves be lauded wereschool-teachers without comparative knowledge, professionalbanquet-orators, nationalists who praised in the service of someinterested hatred, and scholars with appointments who were simplycommissioned to demonstrate that the Hohenzollern system was the lastword of creation. No one dreamed of distinguishing this glorificationof the German people from the apotheosis of the dynasties--to which wehad vowed our heart's blood--and the profound insincerity of thesedeclamations was shown by the indifference with which the dynasties, the main feature in the programme, were afterwards got rid of, and theaffair of the heart's blood shelved. 

We know the stereotyped phrases. German faith, French knavery. Theworld is to find healing in the German soul. We are the heroes--theothers are hucksters. [18] To be German means to do a thing for its ownsake. We are a "race of thinkers and poets. " We have Culture, theothers merely Civilization. [19] We alone are free--the others aremerely undisciplined (or, as the case may be, enslaved). All this weowe to the favour of God and our education under the (here fill inPrussian, Bavarian or Saxon) reigning House, which all the worldenvies us. Clearly therefore we are destined for world-dominion; wehave only to fall-to. 

In one of these phrases, about doing things for their own sake, [20]there is truth. All the more was it for us in particular a vice and asign of degradation to let ourselves be dazzled by the shadowlesstransparency-picture of glorification that was offered to us. Therewere interests concealed in the game, and much lack of moral fibre, all of which we passed over in silence; it was out of place in ourfestal oratory. 

It would be an equal or even a greater vice, only reversed, if we werenow to despair of ourselves. Moderation was what we needed then; whatwe need now is vigorous and conscious self-possession. To-day it is noeasy and attractive business to bring our strong qualities to thesurface; it implies an amount of conviction which it is hard toattain, and self-depreciation means a pitiful faint-heartedness. Butall sham goods offered by babblers, by selfish interests, prophets ofhate and commercial travellers must go overboard. 

We have never been a "race of thinkers and poets, " any more than theJews were a race of prophets, the French and Dutch a race ofpainters, or Königsberg a city of Pure Reason. [21] The old Germanupper classes have, in three well-defined epochs, had force enough tothrow up individuals of mighty endowments for music, poetry andphilosophy; the former lower-classes, whose blood runs in nine-tenthsof our present population, have scarcely contributed anything to theseglories. They have in recent years shown themselves thoroughlyindustrious, plastic, apt for discipline, order-loving, intelligent, practical, honourable, trustworthy, warm-hearted, prudent and helpful, and adapted beyond all expectation to the mechanization of life andindustry; of their power to produce talent we know little, exceptperhaps in the domain of research and technique, which are less a testof creative energy than of applied knowledge and methodical assiduity. 

The important question as to what relations exist between the number, quality and greatness of individual endowments and genius on the oneside, and the character of a people on the other, is still unexploredand very obscure, although we possess a science which calls itself bythe quite unjustified name of national psychology. 

While on one side we have rarely made any serious study of nationalcharacteristics, but have confused them with achievements of cultureand habits of life that mostly proceeded from a thin upper stratumalone, on the other we have as a rule tacitly set down individualendowment (with a strong emphasis on our own) as illustrations ofnational character. In this respect, too, we showed that laxity inproving what we wanted to prove which abounds everywhere from thepoint where calculation with things weighable and measurable leavesoff, and judgment begins. We think it an established fact--inaccordance with just this arbitrary test of genius--that geniusbelongs _par excellence_ to the so-called blonde blue-eyed races ofthe earth. The fact that among the score or two of geniuses of allages who have been determining forces in the world it is hardlypossible to find a single example of this blue-blonde race, but theycan be proved to have been almost all dark, did not affect thequestion. On the other hand the English, whose influence on culturehas been surpassed by none, had their genius-forming power, in whichthey are actually deficient, seriously over-estimated. It was thereverse with the Jews. The fact that in spite of their small numbersthey have produced more of world-moving genius than all other nationsput together, and that from them has proceeded the wholetranscendental ethics of the Western world, has not prevented theirbeing pronounced wholly incapable of creative endowment. 

We shall put aside all this rubbish and for the present decline to gointo theoretic questions. Great individual endowments are related tonational character--to the character of the mind, not that of thewill, which must be considered apart--as the blossom to the plant orthe crystal to the mother-solution; to determine the one from theother needs something more than a mechanical generalization. There isno such thing as a "race of thinkers and poets. " This, however, we cansay: that a people which begets great musicians, poets andphilosophers is one which devotes itself to moods and to visions, while another, as for instance the Latin group, which creates formsand standards, is one that at the cost of mood and vision, incarnatesits sense of will. 

Devotion, receptivity, the feeling for Nature, comprehension, thepassion for truth, meditative depth, spiritual love, are the fairestgifts that can be granted to any people, and to us they have beengranted. But they exclude other gifts, which stand to-day in highrepute, and which we affect in vain. They exclude the capacity forshaping forms and standards, the aptitude for rule, if not even forself-government; in any case the qualities which go to the creation ofnationalities and civilizations. 

It is no mere accident that in not one of the hundredfold provinces oflife, from art to military organization, from State-craft tojointstock-companies, from saintliness to table-utensils, have weGermans discovered a single essential and enduring form. And again, there is scarcely one of these forms which we have not filled with aricher and more living content than those who first discovered it. 

For whoever bears the All within himself can be satisfied with noform; he finds in himself at once vision and reality, thesis andantithesis. He seeks for a synthesis, but all form is one-sided. Heconceives, chooses, comprehends, fulfils, breaks in pieces and throwsaway. He remains a unity in constant change, like the year as itproceeds day by day, hour by hour, and no two of them alike. He doesnot force things--out of respect for creation. 

But he who makes forms must use force. He makes himself the standardand comprehends himself only. Everything else, everything that isextra-normal, unconformable, unintelligible and not understood remainsfor him something alien, trivial, inferior, or negligible. The makerof forms can rule, even by compulsion, without being a tyrant, for heis convinced of the value of what he brings and knows no doubts. He isruthless, yet only up to a certain limit, which is determined by hissense of the inferiority of the other. The man who rejects forms, however, cannot rule; the very penetration into the domain of anotherseems to him a wrong to his own, the basis of which is recognition andallowance. If he is forced to penetrate, he loses all balance, for inwrong-doing he understands no gradations. Similarly he is incapable ofcivilizing, for he cannot take forms seriously; he violates themhimself--how can he impose them upon others? In his inmost soul he isnaïve, for creation is seething in him; but in execution he isconscious, critical, eclectic and methodical, in order that he may becompletely master of the one-sided element into which he has forcedhimself. The man of forms, however, is, in his soul, rigid andconscious, but in action naïve, because he does not know the meaningof doubt. 

Forms grow up like natural products in the course of centuries. Theyassume the existence of uniformity in individuals, fathers reproducedin sons with scarcely a variation. Egypt, Rome, and that modern landof antiquity, France, are examples. For generations France has beencontent with three architectural styles, which are really one and thesame style. The changes in the language are hardly perceptible. Theprincipal domestic utensils are almost the same as they were a hundredyears ago, fashion is merely a vibration. Foreign living languages arelittle studied, their spirit is not understood, the pronunciationremains French. Foreign countries are looked on as a kind ofmenagerie; everything is measured by the native standard. Every one isa judge of everything, for he holds fast to the norm. Within the normthe French are keenly sensitive, their feeling for relations is verysure; the slightest deviation is observed. To doubt the validity ofthe norm is out of question; one might as well criticize the sun andmoon as the style of Louis Quatorze. 

The final judgment of the British in the affairs of life is "this isEnglish, " "that is not English. " Foreign lands are a subject ofgeographical and ethnological study. The whole mighty will of anation is here concentrated in the form of civilizing politicalenergy. Every private inclination is a fad, and even fads have theirfixed forms. An offence against table-manners is banned like an attackon the Church. Nature is mastered with consideration and intelligence, whether the problem is the breeding of sheep or the ruling of India. 

The assurance, self-command and art of ruling which spring from formsare lacking in Germany. Our strongest spirits are formless; they areeclectic or titanic, whether they despise forms or choose forms orburst forms. We have three homes between which we hover--Germany, theearth, and heaven. We comprehend and honour everything--every land, every man, every art and every language; and we are fertilized by whatis foreign; on the lower level we enjoy it and imitate it, on thehigher it spurs us to creation. We are docile, and do not hate whatrules and determines us, only what contracts us and makes usone-sided; an autocratic government may be tolerated, even venerated, if it knows how to be national and popular and does not interfere withour elbow-room. 

We have already touched on the volitional character[22] of the Germanpeople, a character which has been gravely altered by the subsidenceof the ancient upper stratum of society, and by long privations andmiseries. The Germans of Tacitus were a freedom-loving and turbulentpeople; of this not a trace is left. Any one who did not recognizeunder the autocracy that we care little for self-determination andself-responsibility may do so under the revolution, which merelyarises out of an alteration in external conditions. We are not evenyet a nation, but an association of interests and oppositions; aGerman _Irredenta_, as it has been and unfortunately will be shown, isan impossible conception. And since we are not a nation and representno national idea, but only an association of households, it followsthat our influence abroad can only be commercial, and not civilizingor propagandist. 

From this side we are able to understand the German history of thepast two centuries. Prussia, an extra-German Power, grown up incolonized territory, organized itself into a bureaucratic, feudal andmilitary State. It succeeded in mastering half Germany and in looselylinking up the remainder. By rigid organization, by its federatedPrinces and by the strongest army in the world, it supplied the placeof the national character and will which were wanting. Mechanism waspressed into the service, and bore the colossus into a period ofblooming prosperity. The system looked like a nation; in reality itwas an autocratic association of economic interests bristling witharms. It was incapable of developing national forces and ideas, noteven in relation to its settlers in other lands; it was confined tocommercial competition; weak alliances were relied on to secure theposition externally; self-government was not granted, because themilitary organization was the pivot of the whole system; thedrill-sergeant tone at home had its counterpart in the brusqueness ofour foreign policy; enmities grew and organized themselves, and thecatastrophe came. 

For character of will we had substituted discipline. But discipline isnot nationality; it is an external instrument, and when it breaks itleaves--nothing. Now since the Prussian system which called itself bythe mediæval title of the German Empire was, in spite of theprofessors, no popular, national fabric, but a dynastic, military andcompulsory association, with a constitutional façade, the interestednationalist elements took on the repulsive and dishonourable formsthat we all know. The most deeply interested parties, cool andconscious of their strength, the Prussian representatives of themilitary and official nobility, avoided all declamation and onlyinterfered when their interests were endangered. The greaterindustrialists sold themselves. A higher stratum of the middle-classescomposed of certain circles of higher teachers and subaltern officialstook the business seriously, and in order to escape from their drabexistence created that atmosphere of hatred of Socialists, telegramsof homage, and megalomania, which made us intellectually and morallyimpossible before the world. Instead of the Germany of thought andspirit one saw suddenly a brutal, stupid community of interestedpersons, greedy for power, who gave themselves out as that Germanywhose very opposite they were; who, unable to point to anyachievements, any thought of their own, prided themselves on animaginary race-unity which their very appearance contradicted; who hadno ideas beyond rancour; the slaverings of league-oratory andsubordination, and who with these properties, which they were pleasedto call _Kultur_, undertook to bring blessing to the world. 

It was no wonder; for our slavonicized association of interests, benton subordination and on gain, does not produce ideas; its possessionswere power, mechanism and money; whoever was impressed by these thingsbelieved they must impress others too, and so the conclusion wasarrived at that all the great spirits of the past had lived only tomake this triple combination supreme. Wagner had formed the bridgebetween the old Germany and the new--armoured cruisers and giant gunsappeared as a free development from Kant and Hegel, and the word_Kultur_, a word which Germany ought to prohibit by law for thirtyyears to come, masked the confusion of thought. 

To discover now, after our downfall, that Germany ought never to havecarried on a continental let alone a world policy, would be a pitifulexample of _esprit d'escalier_. It is true that it was our right, andeven our duty, by our intellect, our ethics and our greatness, tocarry it on; but the weakness of our character on the side of Will wasthe cause of its failure. Bismarck, a born realist in politics, grownup in the Prussian tradition, trained in the diplomatic tradition byGortschakov, made the calamitous choice. He made us safe for certaindecades; but it was only an intuitive policy in the manner ofStein[23] that could have saved us for centuries. 

In the midst of self-administered and self-determining nations theGerman people, from lack of self-consciousness, indolence of will andinnate servility remained under a patriarchal system of government, aminor under tutelage of divinely-appointed dynasties and rulingclasses. In the childish movement of the educated bourgeoisie of 1848Bismarck saw only the helpless and Utopian, but not the symbolic side, which Marx might have shown him. His practical spirit judged with asmile that a handful of peasantry and grenadiers would suffice tobring to reason this dynastically-minded people. It was only too true;although the bulk of this people had not for thirty years been formedby the peasant class, and although he himself had learned how to makeuse of the power of the modern industrial State in peasant disguise. And so he refused to allow his countrymen to come of age; broke, withthe superiority of genius, and with the weapons of success andauthority, the incompetent forces that resisted him; created, by themagical mechanism of his Constitution, the German Empire as a merecontinuation of the Prussian bureaucratic State reinforced, by theself-glorifying dynasties, with the whole volume of the still existingand justly appreciated habit of obedience; and annihilated for ageneration every aspiration for freedom by branding it with the stainof moral and social depravity. Our political worthlessness andimmaturity came to its climax in the race of office-climbers in 1880, which in 1900 gave place to the battle-fleet patriotism of the greatcapitalists. 

A self-administered and a self-determining nation--such as the nationsof the world, except ourselves, Austria and Russia, were, on thewhole, at the turn of the century--would have been able to carry on asound and steadfast policy in economics and public affairs, and toenjoy the confidence of the world, as little begrudged as America. Onthe other hand, a dangerous warship, armed upon an unexampled scale, given to backward movements and commanded by an uncontrollable sovrandilettante, could only expect sooner or later to be expelled from theharbour of the nations. History is apt to overdo it, especially whencorruption has gone on too long; with every year that passed the doombecame more certain; instead of being expelled, we were annihilated. 

That four years of hunger, a lost war and a military revolt at lastset us free, does not betoken any change of character; and when to-daya servile and facile Press lauds our wretched and idealessConstitution as the finest in the world, that gives us no assuranceof its power to endure. Understanding is no substitute for character, but it is at any rate a step towards the goal; and if it is onceunderstood that other measures are possible, and if, out of thisperiod, certain writings and thoughts shall survive--and survive theywill--then at any rate we may still be weak, but we shall be no longerblind. 

It might be possible at the outset of our journey towards strength ofwill that we should grope our way slowly--very slowly--back to the oldproblems of power. It does not matter if we do. Before we get there, the world will be changed, and will be pregnant with new thoughts. Letus fulfil the duties for which Germany was made what it is. Let us goin quest of the idea and the faculty that are laid upon us; let us dothis in order to live, to recover our health, to shape ourselves anew, to remain a People, to become a Nation, to create a future and toserve the world. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 17: Geistigkeit. This is a difficult word to translate. Itsometimes means merely intellectuality, sometimes in addition (ashere) all that is implied in the phrase, "Ye know not what manner ofspirit ([Greek: oiou pneumatos]) ye are of. "]

[Footnote 18: Referring to Werner Sombart's war-book, _Händler undHelden_. ]

[Footnote 19: _Cf. _ Thomas Mann's remarkable book on the realsignificance of the war: _Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen_ (1918). ]

[Footnote 20: Sachlichkeit. Rathenau seems to have in mind the Germanfeeling for disinterested study and research as illustrated, forinstance, by the fact that when the German Government heard of thegenius of Einstein they brought him to Berlin with a salary of nearly£1000 a year and no duties except to think. Modern bigotry hasexpelled him. ]

[Footnote 21: Where Kant lived and taught, and published his _Kritikder reinen Vernunft_. ]

[Footnote 22: As opposed to the inward, intellectual and spiritualcharacter. ]

[Footnote 23: Stein was the chief leader of Prussia from theFrederician into the modern era. His ministry of reform by which apeasant-proprietary was established, and municipal institutionscreated, lasted only from September 1807 to November 1808. ]

X

On balance it seems that the endowments of the German people work outas follows:--

High qualities of intellect and heart. Ethics and mentality normal. Originative will-power and independent activity, weak. 

We give our devotion freely, and the heart rules in action. Ourfeelings are genuine and powerful. We have courage and endurance. Ledby sentiment rather than by inspiration. We create no forms, areself-forgetful, seek no responsibility, obey rather than rule. Inobedience we know no limit, and never question what is imposed uponus. 

Of its own accord the German people would never have adopted an idealof force. It was imposed on us by the idolaters of the greatwar-machine and those who gained by it; even Bismarck did not shareit. 

We are not competent to form an ideal of civilization, for the senseof unity, will to leadership, and formative energy are lacking to us. We have no political mission for the arrangement of other people'saffairs, for we cannot arrange our own; we do not lead a full life, and are politically unripe. 

We are endowed as no other people is for a mission of the spirit. Sucha mission was ours till a century ago; we renounced it, becausethrough political slackness of will-power we fell out of step; we didnot keep pace with the other nations in internal politicaldevelopment, and, instead, devoted ourselves to the most far-reachingdevelopments of mechanism and to their counterpart in bids for power. It was Faust, lured away from his true path, cast off by theEarth-Spirit, astray among witches, brawlers and alchemists. 

But the Faust-soul of Germany is not dead. Of all peoples on the earthwe alone have never ceased to struggle with ourselves. And not withourselves alone, but with our dæmon, our God. We still hear withinourselves the All, we still expand in every breath of creation. Weunderstand the language of things, of men and of peoples. We measureeverything by itself, not by us; we do not seek our own will, but thetruth. We are all alike and yet all different; each of us is awanderer, a brooder, a seeker. Things of the spirit are takenseriously with us; we do not make them serve our lives, we serve themwith ours. 

"And you dare to say this, in the face of all the brutalizing andbemiring that we experience--the profiteering and gormandizing, theabject submissiveness, the shameless desertions, the apathy, theinsincerity, the heartlessness and mindlessness of our day?"

Yes, I dare to say it, for I believe it and I know it. The soul of theGerman people lies still in the convulsions and hallucinations of itsslow recovery. It is recovery not alone from the war, but fromsomething worse, its hundred-years' alienation from itself. Themuch-ridiculed choice of our old romantic unheraldic colours, black, red and gold, instead of the bodiless and soulless colours under whichwe waged the war, [24] was, among the whirling follies of the time, afaint symbolic movement of our better mind. We must reunite ourselveswith the days before we ceased to be Germans and became Berliners. 

What we need is Spirit. The whole world needs it, no more and no lessthan we do, but will never create it. History knows why it decided forVersailles and the Hall of Mirrors. Not mechanism alone, with itsretinue of nationalism and imperialism, is now again and for the lasttime to be glorified; no, the whole Franco-British policy ofacquisition mounts up even to the throne of the Sun-king, and it isseriously believed that it will govern the destinies of the world forcenturies to come. An inconceivable, and, in its monstrous irony, unsurpassable drama, which is put forward as the introduction to thegreat era. The bourgeois conscience of the West has no inkling ofwhat it means. To this conscience, the war was a huge violation ofdecency, contrived by bandits; its victory is the final triumph of acapitalist, rationalistic civilization; the torch lit in the Eastmeans murder and incendiarism, and the upward migration of the peoplefrom the depths is to it invisible. 

No; it is not here that the spirit of the future is being formed. Onemay discover further ingenious devices, lightning-conductors tomitigate the stroke; but gently or violently a natural force will haveits way, and the new earth which it is preparing needs new seed. 

That we have been given the faculty to shape a new spirit does notimply that we are at liberty to choose whether we shall do it or not. Even if it were not for our life's sake--even if it were against ourlife--still we must obey. But it _is_ for our life's sake, as we haveseen, and as it is indeed obvious, for every organism can live only byfulfilling the purpose of its being. 

And now we have got to a very dangerous place--a place where the usualmoral peroration lies in wait for us--that German peroration whichannounces universal redemption, and immediately, on that lofty note, closes the discussion. Fatherland, Morality, Humanity, Labour, Courage, Confidence--we all know how it goes, the writer has writtensomething fine, the reader has read something fine; emotion on bothsides, little conviction on either. 

It appears, then, that I have just been writing something extremelysuspect. Has the reader followed me through five-and-thirty of thesedifficult folios in order to arrive in the end at that very everydayterm, Spirit?[25] Is there any term in commoner use, and what are weto think about it? Softly--there is worse to come! The next word isstill more dubious, philistinishly so, in fact--the word Culture. [26]I cannot help it--we must pass on by way of these everydayconceptions. We must get through the crowd, where hack-phrases elbowus. Any journey you may take, though it were to Tibet, must begin atthe Berlin Central Railway Station. What is wrong with these popularphrases is not that they start from an everyday conception, but thatthey remain content with it, and do not think it out to the end. 

Our task, therefore, stated in the most general terms, is to makeactually spiritual a people which is capable of spirituality. Andsince spirituality cannot be propped up by any external thrust, bysermons, newspaper articles, leagues, or propaganda, but must beassociated with life and developed out of life, so the organic processand the condition of life to which it leads is called Culture. 

It is only with deep reluctance and after long search that I havewritten down this beautiful word, a word now worn almost beyondrecognition. Can we find our way back to its application andsignificance? Even when it is not drawn out with a futile prefix[27]one can hardly detect its pure meaning by reason of the manyovertones. The school, if possible the university, some French andEnglish, the rules about I and Me, visiting-cards, shirt-cuffs, foreign phrases, top-hats, table-manners: these are some of theovertones that make themselves heard when we talk of a cultured man, or rather as they have it a cultured gentleman. A hundred years ago, as the word implies, we understood by culture the unfolding and thefull possession of innate bodily, spiritual and moral forces. In thissense Goethe showed us the two fraternal figures formed after his ownimage: Faust the richer, and the poorer Wilhelm Meister, striving forculture. 

The ideal which hovers before us is not one of education, not even oneof knowledge, although both education and knowledge enter into it; itis an ideal of the Will. It will not be easy to convey the breadth andthe boundless range which we are to attach to this conception. That itis not an airy figment is clear from the fact that for centuries theGreeks, with full consciousness, adopted as their highest law (thoughdirected to a somewhat different end) that impulse of the will whichthey called _Kalokagathia_. [28]

From one who has introduced the conception of mechanism into Germanthought, who has rescued the conception of the soul from the hands ofthe psychologists and brought it back to its primal meaning, who haswritten so much about soulless intellectualism, and has put forwardthe empire of the soul as the goal of humanity, it is not to beexpected that he should preach any mechanical kind of culture, orindeed any that it is possible to acquire by learning. 

How culture is to be produced we shall see; the first thing necessaryis that it should be willed. 

Willed it must be, in a sense and with a strength of purpose and aforce of appreciation of which we to-day, when the ages of faith, ofthe Reformation, of the German classics, and the wars of liberation, lie so far behind us, have no idea at all. 

When the current conception of intellectual culture so much prized infamily, society and business life, and tricked out with criticisms ofstyle, with historical data and incidents of travel is justlyridiculed, then the will to complete cultivation of the body, theintellect and the soul of the people must be so strong that allquestions of convenience, of enjoyment, of prestige and of materialinterests must sink far into the background. This word must sound sothat all who hear it can look in each other's eyes with a full mutualunderstanding and without the slightest sense of ambiguity; just asthey do in Japan when the name of the common head of all families, theMikado, is named. There must be one thing in Germany and it must bethis thing, which is altogether out of reach of the yawning, blinkingand grinning scepticism of the coffee-house, and of the belching andgrowling of the tavern. Any man who puts this thing aside in favour ofhis class-ideas, or his speculations in lard, or his dividends, or thedemands of his Union, must understand that he is doing something asoffensive as if he went out in public without washing himself. 

The conception of Culture as our true and unique faculty must be soprofoundly grasped that in public life and legislation it must havethe first word and the last. Though we become as poor as church-micewe must stake our last penny on this, and tune up our education andinstruction, our models and outlook, our motives and claims, ourachievement and our atmosphere, to so high a point that any one cominginto Germany shall feel that he is entering into a new age. 

Society must be penetrated by this conception. Those classes whichalready possess something resembling it--such as training, education, experience, tradition, outlook, good breeding--must pour out with bothhands what they have to dispense; not in the way of endowments, conventicles, lectures and patronizing visits, but in quiet, self-sacrificing, personal service. 

All this, of course, cannot be done without the free response of theother side. The devoted attempts which have been made, especially inEngland, and for some years with us too, to win this response by longand unselfish solicitation were destined to remain merely the missionof individual lives, for they were not supported by the will of thecommunity as a whole; it rather ran counter to them. A Peace of Godmust be proclaimed, not as between the Haves and the Have-nots, notbetween the proletariat and the capitalists, not between the so-calledcultured classes and the uncultured, but between those who are readyfor a mutual exchange of experience, a give-and-take of theirtradition on both sides. Not an exchange on business principles, suchas propaganda in satisfaction of demands, or curiosity on one side fora new pastime on the other, but a covenant. This, however, is onlypracticable if the class-war, as an end in itself, is put a stop to. 

The great change itself cannot be come by so cheaply; it demands otherassumptions, of which we shall have something to say later. But theattitude and temper, the recognition of the task, could not be betterintroduced than through the mutual service of the two social strata. 

We have still at our disposal, handed on from the past, certainorganized methods of investigation and administration. We now needchairs and institutes of research, not for the trivial business ofpopular enlightenment and lectures, but for the study andinvestigation of the needs of national culture, the idea which mustnow take the place of national defence. We shall have need of centralauthorities, not, like the late Ministries of Culture skimping thescanty endowment of the Board Schools, but doing the work of Germaneducation, progress, and interchange of labour. [29]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 24: Black, red and gold were originally the colours of astudents' Corps in Frankfort. They were adopted as the colours of theabortive German Federation of 1848, apparently under a mistaken ideathat they represented the colours of the ancient Germanic Empire. Thecolours of the Empire of 1870 were the Prussian black and white, withthe addition of red. ]

[Footnote 25: Geist. ]

[Footnote 26: Bildung. It is as difficult in English as it is inGerman to render in one word exactly what the author is thinking of. In its literal sense Bildung implies a shaping and formative action. ]

[Footnote 27: Ausbildung. ]

[Footnote 28: A harmony of character, compounded of beauty andgoodness. ]

[Footnote 29: Arbeitsausgleich. The meaning of this will be apparentlater. ]

XI

Some decades ago the conscience of middle-class society in England wasstirred. The result was Toynbee Hall and the Settlements-movement, which afterwards found praiseworthy counterparts in Germany. Societyhad begun to understand the wrong which it had done to its brothers, the proletariat, whom it had robbed of mind, and offered them insteadsoul-destroying, mechanical labour. Then choice spirits arose whodedicated their whole lives to the service of their brothers. Thisgreat and noble work did much to soften pain and hatred, and here andthere many a soul was saved by it; but it could not act as it wasintended to act, because it could not become what it imagined itselfto be. 

It ought to have been, and believed itself to be, a simple and obviouspiece of love-service, a pure interchange of spiritual possessionsbetween class and class, no condescending pity or educative mission. It was a noble and a splendid error; the movement retained the form ofsacrifice and benefaction. On both sides social feeling wasindifferent to it, or even hostile. What one hand gave, a thousandothers took back; what one hand received, a thousand others rejected. The collective conscience of a class had never been stirred, it wasmerely that the conscience of certain members of upper-class societyhad sent out envoys; it had not moved as a body. Individuals wereready to sacrifice themselves, but the conditions of labour remainedunchanged. 

So long as a general wrong is allowed to stand, it gives the lie toevery individual effort. The wrong becomes even more bitter because itloses its unconsciousness--men know it for wrong, and do not amend it. For this reason a second movement of importance, that of the People'sHigh Schools, which has created in Denmark the most advancedpeasant-class in existence, can achieve no social reform in landscloven by proletarianism. If in addition to this the High Schoolmovement should depart from its original conception, that of atemporary community of life between the teachers and the taught, andshould, instead of this, resolve itself into a lecture-institution, then the danger arises that what is offered will be disconnectedmatter, intended for entertainment, and without any basis of realknowledge, something commonly called half-culture which is worse thanunculture, and is more properly described as misculture. 

No work of the charitable type can bring about the reconciliation ofclasses or be a substitute for popular education. The reconciliationof classes, however, even if it were attainable, is by no means ourgoal, but rather the abolition of classes, and our ultimate object isnot popular education but popular culture. We do not intend to givewith one hand and take back with the other, we shall not condemn abrother-people to dullness and quicken a few chosen individuals; no, we mean to go to the root of the evil, to break down the monopoly ofculture, and to create a new people, united and cultured throughout. 

But the root of the trouble lies in the conditions of labour. It is anidle dream to imagine that out of that soulless subdivision of labourwhich governs our mechanical methods of production, the oldhandicrafts can ever be developed again. Short of some catastrophicdepopulation which shall restore the mediæval relation between thearea of the soil and the numbers that occupy it, the subdivision oflabour will have to stand, and so long as it stands no man willcomplete his job from start to finish--he will only do a section ofit; at best, and assuming the highest mechanical development, it willbe a work of supervision. But mindless and soulless work no man can dowith any joy. The terrible fact about the mechanization of industry isthat productive work, the elementary condition of life, the very formof existence, which fills more than half of each man's waking day, isby it made hated and hateful. It degrades the industrious man, thrilling with energy, into a work-shy slacker--for what else does itmean that all social conflicts culminate in the demand for ashortening of the hours of work? For the peasant, the research-worker, the artist, the working day is never long enough; for the artisan, whocalls himself _par excellence_ a "worker, " it can never be too short. 

The advance of technical invention will make it possible in the end totransform all mechanical work into supervision. But the process willbe long and partial, we cannot wait till it is completed, especiallyas times will come when technical knowledge will stand still, or even, it may be, go back. Any one who knows in his own flesh what mechanicalwork is like, who knows the feeling of hanging with one's whole soulon the creeping movement of the minute-hand, the horror that seizeshim when a glance at the watch shows that the eternity which haspassed has lasted only ten minutes, who has had to measure the day'stask by the sound of a bell, who kills his lifetime, hour after hour, with the one longing that it might die more quickly--he knows how theshortening of the working day, whatever may be put in its place, hasbecome for the factory artisan a goal of existence. 

But he knows something else as well. He knows the deadliest of allwearinesses--the weariness of the soul. Not the rest when one breathesagain after wholesome bodily exertion, not the need for relaxation anddistraction after a great effort of intellect, but an empty stupor ofexhaustion, like the revulsion after unnatural excess. It is theshallowest kind of tea-table chatter to talk about good music, edifying and instructive lectures, a cheerful walk in God's freeNature, a quiet hour of reading by the lamp, and so on, as a remedyfor this. Drink, cards, agitation, the cinemas, and dissipation canalone flog up the mishandled nerves and muscles, until they wilt againunder the next day's toil. 

The worker has no means of comparison. He does not know what wholesomelabour feels like. He will never find his way back to work on theland, for there he cannot get the counter-poisons which he thinksindispensable, and he lacks the organic, ordering mind whichmechanical employment has destroyed. Even if some did get back, itwould be in vain, for though agriculture is hungering for thousands ofhands it cannot absorb millions. The worker has no means ofcomparison; hence his bottomless contempt for intellectual work, theresults of which he recognizes, but which, in regard to the labour itcosts, he puts on a level with the idling of the folk whom he seesstrolling or driving about with their lapdogs in the fashionablestreets. 

The middle-class conscience, and even that of the men of science, turns away its face in shameful cowardice from the horror ofmechanized labour. Apart from the well-meaning æsthetes who live inrural elegance surrounded by all the appliances which mechanism cansupply, who wrinkle their brows when the electric light goes out, andwho write pamphlets asking with pained surprise why people cannotreturn to the old land-work and handicraft, most of us takemechanical labour as an unalterable condition of life, and merelycongratulate ourselves that it is not we who have to do it. 

The Utopianist agitators who knowingly or unknowingly suppress theessential truth that their world of equality will be a world of thebitterest poverty, treat the situation just as lightly. Before them, in the future State, hovers the vision of some exceptional literary orpolitical appointment. The others may console themselves with thethought that in spite of a still deeper degree of poverty, towardswhich they are sinking by their own inactivity, the hell of mechanicalwork, by no means abolished, will probably be a little reduced, so faras regards the time they spend in it. The notion that mechanical workwill be made acceptable and reconciled with intellectual, if only itis short enough and properly paid, has never been thought out; it is astill-born child of mental lethargy, like all those visions of thefuture that are being held up to our eyes. Try notions like this onany other ill--toothache, for instance! All our rhetoric aboutmechanical work being no ill at all, is ignorant or fraudulent, and ifnothing further be done than to reduce it to four hours, all oursocial struggles will immediately be concentrated on bringing it downto two. The goal of Socialism, so far as it relates to this _ponsasinorum_ of shortening hours, is simply the right to loaf. 

Let us look facts in the face. Mechanical work is an evil in itself, and it is one which we never can get rid of by any conceivableeconomic or social transformation. Neither Karl Marx nor Lenin hassucceeded here, and on this reef will be wrecked every future Statethat may be set up on the basis of current Socialistic ideas. In thispoint lies the central problem of Socialism; undisturbed, as was tilllately that legendary conception of surplus-value, and bedded, likethat conception, in a rats'-nest of rhetorical phrases, repeated frommouth to mouth and never tested by examination. 

The bringing of Mind into the masses, the cultured State, [30] which isthe only possible foundation of a society worthy of humanity, mustremain unattainable until everything conceivable has been thought outand done to alleviate the mischievous operation of this evil, whichdulls and stupefies the human spirit and which, in itself, isineradicable. No Soviet-policy, no socialization, no property-policy, no popular education, nor any other of the catchwords which form _adnauseam_ the monotonous staple of our current discussion of affairs, can go to the heart of the problem. Instead we must establish and putinto practice the principle which I have called that of theInterchange of Labour, and which I must now, in broad outline, endeavour to explain. 

The object of this principle is to bring mind into labour. Itdemands--since mind cannot be brought into mechanical work beyond acertain degree fixed by technical conditions--that the day's work asa whole shall have a share of it, by means of the exchange andassociation of mental and mechanical employment. Until this principleshall have been carried into effect, all true culture of the peopleremains impossible. So long as there is no culture of the people, solong must culture remain a monopoly of the classes, and of escapesfrom the masses; so long must society be wanting in equilibrium, aunion open to breach from every side, and one which, however highlyits social institutions may be developed, holds down the people toforced labour, and destroys culture. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 30: Bildungsstaat. ]

XII

There is a way by which the day's work can be ennobled, and even havemind brought into it, [31] on capitalistic lines. Before the War wewere just about to enter on this path--America is treading it now. Itsfundamental condition is a huge increase in general well-being. 

The daily wages of the American working-man have risen, as we havealready remarked, to seven or even ten dollars, corresponding to apurchasing power of over a hundred marks. This amounts to so radical aremoval of all restrictions in domestic economy that one can no longerspeak of the proletarian condition as existing in the United States. Aman who drives to his work in his own automobile can satisfy all hisreasonable needs in the way of recreation and of extending hiseducation, he looks at his sectional job (as has not seldom been thecase in America even in earlier days) with a critical eye, he formshis own judgment of its place in the whole, he improves the processes, and amuses himself by being both workman and engineer. (Consider inthe light of this fact the value of the prophecy that America isstanding on the brink of Bolshevism!)

In a country whose wealth at this moment--in consequence ofwar-profits and depreciation of money--is almost equal to that of therest of the world put together, the process of abolishingproletarianism can go forward on capitalistic lines. But we Germans, since it is decreed that we shall be among the poorest of the peoples, and must begin afresh, and live for the future--we shall renouncewithout envy the broad path of the old way of thought, the way ofriches, in order to clear with hard work the new path on which, oneday, all will have to follow us. The way of Culture is the way towhich we are pointed, and we have described Interchange of Labour asthe fundamental condition which enables us to travel it. It is nowclear that the conception of popular culture is not, after all, represented by any of the five-and-twenty idealizing catchwords withwhich we are wont to console ourselves in our elegiac orations, butthat by it is meant a clearly defined political procedure. 

By the principle of Interchange of Labour it is required that everyemployee engaged in mechanical work can claim to do a portion of hisday's work in intellectual employment; and that every brainworkershall be obliged to devote a portion of his day to physical labour. 

There are, of course, fixed limits to the application of thisprinciple, on the one side in intellectual, on the other in bodilyincapacity, as well as in those rare cases where it is recognized thatthe interrupted hours of intellectual work cannot be made good. 

We would also establish a year of Labour-Service, to be devoted by thewhole youth of Germany, of both sexes, to bodily training and work. 

The tests of capacity and of the claim to be reckoned as "cultured" isnot to consist in examinations but in proof of work. Any one who canoffer some show of claim can demand to be tested, and, if the resultis favourable, to receive further culture. Thus we shall be takingseriously the question of the ascent to higher grades, which, so longas it depends on a particular age, or on school certificates, mustremain on paper. 

Let no one say that this testing system is a mere mechanical method, that it degrades Culture from its intellectual dignity, and isequivalent to the Chinese literary tests for office. True culture isdistinguished from mere sybaritic æstheticism in that in some sense orother it makes for production. Where there is no talent for art or forcreative thought, then there remain to be developed the educationalforces of judgment, or a faculty for the conduct of life, which musthave their influence. 

Different categories of Culture will arise of themselves; not ranks orcastes or classes, but grades of society, each of which may beattained by any one. No one must be able to say that any monopoly ofculture has barred his way, or that training and testing have beendenied him. If the culture be genuine it will never look down inintellectual arrogance on the stages below it; if it have dutiesassociated with it, then he who has rejected the path of ascent, orhas failed in it, cannot claim to fulfil those duties. Any one who hasno faculty but that of a glib tongue will find in the multiplicity ofcallings some field for his activity; but the rule of the talker, backed by force or not, will at any rate be spared us. 

At this point we may hear a voice from the average heart of Socialismexclaim: "How is this? Do you call that having no castes? We have justbegun to shake off the yoke of the capitalists and now are we expectedto put the cultured in command? This is pure reaction!"

Softly! If this is a case of misunderstanding, we shall clear it up. If any scruples still remain, we shall consider them further. 

Let us take the misunderstanding first. It is apparently forgottenthat capitalism ruled by hereditary power. Any one who belonged tothat circle ruled along with it, whether he were competent to rule ornot. But culture is not a heritable possession; no one can win it saveby virtue of a higher spirit and will. He who has this spirit and thiswill, can and will win it. He who wins it is fit for higherresponsibilities. Is the voice from the average heart answered?

No. It replies: "Heritable or not, what do we care? We are out forequality. Distinctions in culture are a kind of aristocracy. "

Now, good heart, you have revealed yourself. What was the meaning ofyour everlasting talk about the ladder for the rise of capacity? Ishall tell you. The capable man is to toil, and to rise just so far asyou permit him, namely, till you can possess yourselves of the fruitsof his labour: then he is to be thrust down, and the loudest mouth isto rule. You are not pleased with this interpretation? Neither am I, so we are quits. 

For of the folly of imagining a society of equals I do not intend tospeak. The average man, who cannot understand equality of humandignity, equality before God, thinks nothing of demanding equality inexternals, equality in responsibility and vocation. But this shamequality is the enemy of the true, for it does not fit man's burden tohis strength, it creates overburdened, misused natures, driving theone to scamped work and hypocrisy, and the other to cynicism. Everyaccidental and inherited advantage must indeed be done away with. Butif there is any one who, among men equal in external conditions, induties and in claims, demands that they should also be equal in mind, in will and in heart--let him begin by altering Nature!

In remuneration also, that is to say, in the apportionment ofconditions of work, a mechanical equality would be tantamount to anunjust and intolerable inequality in the actual distribution orremission of work. Work of the highest class, creative andintellectual work--the most self-sacrificing that is known to manbecause it draws to itself and swallows up a man's whole life, including his hours of leisure and recreation--this work demandsextreme consideration, in the form of solitude, freedom fromdisturbance, from trivial and distracting cares or occupations, andcontact with Nature. This kind of consideration is, from the economicpoint of view, an outlay which mechanical work does not require. Ifmechanical and intellectual work are to be placed under the samespecific conditions, under which the highest standard of output is tobe maintained and the producers are as far as possible to bear anequal burden, then the scale of remuneration must be different. Starting from a subsistence minimum it must for intellectual work begraded two stages upward, one for the output, [32] and one for thegrade of culture implied. 

Women will also be subject to this system of grading whether theyexercise any vocation outside their homes or not, for society has adeep interest in the culture of its mothers, and in externalincentives to culture women must share equally with men. 

An intimate sense of association will grow up within each grade ofculture. This, however, will not impair the general solidarity of thepeople, since no hereditary family egoism can arise. This sense ofassociation, renewed with elements that vary from generation togeneration, and corresponding very much to the relations betweencontemporary artists who spring from different classes or territories, will dissolve the relics of the old hereditary sentiment and absorbinto itself whatever traditional values the latter may possess. 

Between the separate grades there will not only be the connexionafforded by the living possibilities of free ascent from one to theother, but the system of ever-renewed co-operation in rank-and-file atthe same work will in itself promote culture, tradition, and theconsciousness of union. We need only recall the old gilds and militaryassociations in order to realize what a high degree of manly civicconsciousness can arise from the visible community of duty andachievement. The mechanical worker will become the instructor of histemporary comrade and guest, and the latter will in turn widen theother's outlook, and emulate him in the development of the processesof production. The manual worker will bring to the desk and theboard-room his freedom from prepossessions and the practicalexperience of his calling; he will learn how to deal with abstractionsand general ideas; he will gain a respect for intellectual work, andwill feel the impulse to win new knowledge and faculty, or to makegood what he has neglected. 

 * * * * *

Two objections remain to be considered and confuted. 

First: there are far more places to be filled in mechanical than inintellectual employment. Is it possible so to organize the interchangeof work that every one who desires intellectual employment can findit? The answer is: that, whether we like it or not, all work tendsmore and more to take on an administrative character. Just as inindustry there is ever more talk and less production, so our economiclife is working itself out through thousands upon thousands of neworganizations. Industrial Councils, Councils of Workers, Gild-Councils, are forming themselves in among the existing agenciesof administration; and the immediate consequence of this is atremendous drop in production, to be followed later by a more highlyarticulated and more remunerative system of work. It is as if a marblestatue came to life, and then had to be internally equipped withbones, muscles, veins and nerves. Or it resembles the transformationof a shabby piece of suburban building-ground: it has to be dug up, drained, paved, fenced; and until traffic has poured into it, itremains a comfortless and dismal waste. 

But the administrative side of our future economic and national lifedemands the creation of so many posts of intellectual work that atpresent there is not the trained _personnel_ to fill it. If the Yearof Labour-Service is introduced, there will be still more defectionsand gaps to be filled. The rush for intellectual work is more likelyto be too small than too great. 

Let us come to the second objection. Will not confusion be worseconfounded if there are many who have to fill two jobs, if, in thesejobs constant exchanges are taking place, if the periods of work arebrief and subject to untimely interruptions, if time and work are lostthrough never-ending rearrangement?

Assuredly. And any one who starts with the idea of the old high-strungwork done, as it were, under military discipline, any one whocherishes the remotest idea that this system can ever return, in spiteof the fact that its clamps and springs have been dashed to pieces, may well lament these unsettlements. One who starts from thefluctuating conditions of our present-day, make-believe labour willtake organic unsettlements as part of the price to be paid, if theyonly lead in the end to systematic production. But one who weighs thefact that the make-believe life of our present economy has not evenyet reached its final form, will discern in every new transition-form, however tedious, the final redemption; in so far, at least, as anyequilibrium is capable of being restored at all. 

The essence of the interchange of labour will, therefore, consist inthis, that while the distinction between physical and intellectualwork will still exist, there will be no distinction between a physicaland intellectual calling. Until advanced age may forbid, it will beopen to every man not merely to acquire some ornamental branches ofknowledge but seriously and with both feet to take his footing in theopposite calling to his own. 

The different callings will learn to know and respect each other, andto understand their respective difficulties. This applies particularlyto those who call themselves the operative workers. 

As soon as hereditary idleness has come to an end and loafing has beentrampled out, then many a one, who now thinks that mental work is merechattering, will learn through his novitiate at the desk, thatthinking hurts. If he does not feel himself equal to this kneading andrummaging of the brain, he will go back with relief to his workshop;he will neither envy nor despise those who are operative workers withthe brain, and will understand, or at least unconsciously feel, theoppositions in human nature and the differences in conditions of life, and will know them to be just. He cannot and must not keep himselfwholly aloof from the elements of mental training; his contact withbrainworkers will not cease; and thus his complete and passiveresignation to the domination of ignorant rhetoric will lose itscharm. 

Any man will be respected who contents himself with the lowestprescribed measure of culture, who modestly renounces further study, and goes back to manual work. But there will be no excuse for thosewho know nothing and can do nothing, but pretend to set everybodyright; for there will be no monopoly of culture to keep them down, andall genuine faculty must come to the test of action. 

 * * * * *

To-day there are three classes of social swindlers. First, those wholive on the community without returning it any service. These are thepeople who live idly on inherited money, and the loafers. Againstthese social legislation must be framed. Secondly, those whodeliberately practise "ca' canny, " and therefore live on the surpluswork of their fellows. These are the champions of the principle: Everyone according to his need, no one according to his deed; the_saboteurs_ of labour. Against these the remedy lies in the spread ofintelligence and a just system of remuneration. Thirdly, there arethose who simulate thought and brain-work while they have nothing togive but hack phrases uttered with a glib tongue. Against these worstof all swindlers, these sinners against the Spirit, the remedy isculture. 

And this, in the new Order, is open to every one, young or old, whocan maintain his foothold in the exercise of intellect, when thechance is offered him. He who in his test-exercise reaches a normalstandard of accomplishment can demand that he shall not be sent backto manual work, but continue to be employed in the same occupation, and be further cultivated in whatever direction he desires. At everyfurther stage of development a corresponding sphere of activity is tobe opened to him, up to the point at which the limits of his capacitycome into sight. 

Let no one object that the rush for intellectual work will becomeuncontrollable. Would that it might! For then the country would be sohighly developed and its methods of work so perfected that there wouldbe quite a new relation between the demand for head-work and forhand-work. For a long time to come this rush will be far smaller thanwe imagine; for the immediate future it will suffice if the risingforces are set free, and the laggard are tranquillized. 

But, the Radicals will cry, what an unsocial principle! Have we atlast, with difficulty, brought it to the point that the accursedone-year examination[33] is abrogated, and now are we again to becondemned according to this so-called standard of culture?

Stay! there is a fallacy here. In our transition period which is stillquite dominated by the monopoly of culture, I have nothing to sayagainst the abrogation of every educational test, even though in a fewyears we shall feel the deeply depressing effects which will arisefrom the domination of the uncultured. 

But the transition period will come to an end. Then every one wholikes will be able to learn and to execute, and every one who is ablewill wish to do so. 

"But supposing one does not wish? May not he be the very one who ismost capable of achievement? We don't want model pupils. "

Nor do I want model pupils. The boy who has learnt nothing may makehis trial as a man when culture is open to all. But if, as a man, hedoes not care to rack his brains he will be thought none the less of;he will merely be offered ordinary work according to his choice. 

But those who wish to see responsibility and the destiny of thecountry placed in the hands of men who do not care to rack theirbrains, must not entrench themselves behind social principles, butplainly admit that they want for all time to establish the rule ofdemagogy and the vulgarization of intellect. It is not for such a oneto pass judgment on the mission of Germany. 

The way to the German mission, to German culture, which is to be nomore a culture of the classes but of the people, stands open to all bymeans of the Interchange of Labour. The whole land is as it were asingle ship's crew; the issues are the same for all. The manual workeris no longer kept down by over-fatigue, and the brainworker is nolonger cut off from the rest of the people. 

The manual worker no longer regards the territory of culture as a sortof inaccessible island, but rather as a district which he can visitevery day and in which he is quite at home. Every one in future willstart even in school training, and the degree to which his furtherculture may be carried will not be limited by want of money or oftime, or, above all, of opportunity. He will continually haveintercourse with men of culture, and in that intercourse he will atonce give and receive; the habits of thought, the methods and therange of intellectual work which are now only the heritage of a fewwill be his own; and the twofold language of the country, the languageof conceptions and the language of things, will for him be one. 

There will be no permanent system of stratification; the energies ofthe people, rising and falling, will be in constant movement and theirelements will never lose touch. There may be self-tormenting andunhappily constituted natures who will hate their own dispositions andthe destiny they have shaped for themselves--these aberrations willnever cease so long as men are men--but there will be no more hatredof class for class, any more than there is in any voluntaryassociation of artists or of athletes. 

And since culture is to be at once the recognized social aim of thecountry and the personal goal and standard of each individual, thestruggle for possessions and enjoyments, doubly restrained by publicopinion and by deeper insight, will sink into the background. 

But the spirit of the land will not resemble any that we know atpresent. As in the Middle Ages, a spiritual power will rule, but itwill not be imposed from without or above, it will be a creation fromwithin. The competition of all will be like that of the best in thetime of the Renaissance, but it will not be a competition forconventional values but for the furthering of life. The country willbecome, as it was in former days, a generous giver, not, however, fromthe lofty eminence of a class set apart, but out of the whole strengthof the people. 

Again, for the first time, the convinced and conscious will of apeople will be seen to direct itself to a common and recognized goal. This is a fact of immeasurable significance, it implies the exerciseof forces which we only discern on the rare mountain-peaks of history, and of which the last example was the French Revolution. 

But those dangers of which we have spoken, that hell of a mechanicalsocialism, of institutions and arrangements without sentiment orspirit, are done away with, for production has ceased to be merelymaterial and formal, it has acquired absolute value and substance. Spirit is the only end that sanctifies all means; and it sanctifiesnot by justifying them but by purifying them. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 31: Vergeistigt werden. It is difficult to render this wordin the sense in which Rathenau uses it; 'intellectualized' does notsay enough, and 'spiritualized' says a little too much. ]

[Footnote 32: Assuming that the highest output is reached in theparticular instance which of course will not be the case with everyworker whether in the mechanical or intellectual sphere. The authorappears to be referring to amount, not quality, of output, as thelatter would be covered by the second clause, relating to grade ofculture (Bildungsstufe). ]

[Footnote 33: Referring to the shortening of military service whichused to be accorded to recruits of a certain educational standard. ]

XIII

As the kinsfolk of a dying man comfort themselves in the death-chamberwith every little droop in the curve of temperature, although theyknow in their hearts that the hour has come, so our critics flatterthemselves with the idea that in the end all will come right, if notby itself at least with trifling exertion. But it is not so: except bythe greatest exertion nothing will come right. Our lake-city ofeconomics and social order is ripe for collapse, for the piles onwhich it is built are decayed. It is true that it still stands, andwill be standing for an hour or so, and life goes on in it very muchas in the days when it was sound. We can choose either to leave italone, and await the downfall of the city, among whose ruins life willnever bloom again, or we can begin the underpinning of the totteringedifice, a process which will last for decades, which will allow nopeace to any of us, which will be toilsome and dangerous, and will endalmost imperceptibly, when the ancient city has been transformed intothe new. 

Let us have no doubt about it: something tremendous and unprecedentedhas to be accomplished here. Does any thinking man believe that whenthe social order of the world has collapsed, when a country of theimportance of Germany has lost the very basis of its existence, whenthe development of centuries is broken off, its faculties and itstraditions emptied of value and repudiated--does any man reallybelieve that by means of certain clauses in a Constitution a fewconfiscations, socializations and rises in wages, a nation of sixtymillions can be endowed with a new historical reason for existence?Why is not the negro republic of Liberia ahead of all of us?

Our character is weak on the side of will, and our former lords saythat we are good for nothing except under strict disciplineadministered by dynasts and hereditary nobles. If that is true, it isall over with us; unless some dictator shall take pity on us and giveus a modest place among the nations with a great past and a smallfuture. If we are worthy of our name we must be born again of theSpirit. Merely to conceive this is in itself an achievement for apeople; to carry it out, to embody the conception in a new order ofsociety, is at once a test and an achievement. 

Our social ethics must take up a new position. Hitherto--stripping offthe usual rhetorical phrases--it has taken its stand on two effectiveand really driving principles, those of Duty and of Success; twoside-views of Individualism. All else, including love of one'sneighbour, sense of solidarity, faith, spiritual cultivation, feelingfor Nature, was (apart from a few lofty spirits) merely subsidiary;means to an end, convention or falsehood. There were few whosecareers were not influenced by these estimates; the majority of theupper classes was wholly under their dominion. 

The two goals of our wishes, to have something and to be something, were expressed by the whole outward aspect of society. The greatobject was not to be counted as a Tom, Dick or Harry, one who hadless, or was less, than others. There were grades of being, grades ofhuman being: it was possible to be something, to be much, to belittle, or to be nothing at all. From the white collar to the pearlnecklace, from the good nursery to the saloon car, from thewatch-ribbon to the sword-belt, from the place at the ordinary to thetitle of Excellency, everything was a proof of what one had, or was, or believed oneself to be. If one did not know a man one must notspeak to him; if one knew him, one might borrow a hundred marks fromhim, but one must not ask him for a penny. Whoever had wealthdisplayed it in order to be admired; whoever had a social positiondisplayed his unapproachability and the weight of his dignity, as, forinstance, when with an absent look and lost in the burden of his ownexistence he entered a dining-hall. From inferiors one demanded adegrading attitude and forms of speech, and presented to them a faceof stone; towards those in higher position one came to life anddisplayed an attentive civility. It was--or shall we sayis?--permissible to lavish in an hour the monthly income of a poorfamily. "One had it to spend" and "what business was it of theirs?" Inthe lower ranks there was much of genuine revolt against these abusesand also much envy and malice, much open imitation, and much of secretadmiration. Every silly craze was cheapened in hideous imitations, thesuburb and the village made a display which in quality, indeed, fellbelow the model, but in quantity not at all. 

It may be said that these were excrescences or city fashions; that onemust not generalize. These are empty phrases. To understand the spiritof a society it is not hermits that one must study. And, moreover, letany one ask himself whether this society was really based on the ideaof solidarity and human friendliness or upon unscrupulous personalinterests and exploitation, on shows and shams, on the demand forservice and the claim to command. If anything can explain theeagerness with which we Germans flung ourselves into a war whoseorigins we did not know and did not want to know, then besides theconscious objects, advantage, rehabilitation, and renown, we must alsotake into account the obscure impulse of the national conscience whichin the midst of evil individualism and of personal and class egoismyearned for the sense of solidarity and fusion. 

Is it objected that all this lies deeply rooted in human nature, thatit has been there from time immemorial, and it is impossible to alterit at one stroke? Pedantic drivel! Many things lie deep in humannature, and it depends on which of these the will chooses to develop. And who talked of altering things at one stroke? Our judgment ofvalues is to be transformed, and if human nature never changed, muchthat now flaunts itself in the sunshine would be creeping in theshade. This transformation of judgment is a matter of recognizingthings for what they are. When pomp, extravagance, exclusiveness, frivolity and fastness, greed, place-hunting and vulgar envy arelooked on with the same eyes as aberrations in other provinces oflife, then we shall not indeed have abolished all vice, but theatmosphere will be purified. Look at our sturdy Socialists of theNovember days[34] and proselytes of every description: you can seethat the acquisition of a new judgment of values may be the affair ofan hour! And for that reason one must not criticize them tooclosely--unless they try to make a profit out of their conversion. 

All social judgments presuppose a system of recognized values. Thevalues of Christian ethics have never penetrated deeply into thecollective judgment of mankind; even in the mediæval bloom ofChristian, or rather of ecclesiastical, culture the moral conceptionsof Christianity remained the possession of a few chosen spirits andcommunities; society in general accepted the mythical element, didhomage to the hierarchy, and remained ethically pagan, the upperclasses being guided by a code of honour resting on the worship ofcourage. The Churches never made any serious effort to shape anethical code; they were preoccupied with the teaching of dogmas offaith which carried them ever farther and farther from the groundworkof the Gospels, and they devoted whatever surplus energies they had topolitics, and to accommodations with the ruling powers of the world. 

The cult of courage imposed on and exercised by the ruling classes, and symbolically imaged in their code of honour, took an effectiveshape in the banning of cowardice and of cowardly crime. So far aspositive values go, the ethics of nobility degenerated into smartness, the claim for "satisfaction" and the exclusiveness of rank; a Prussianand Kantian abstraction, the conception of duty, a conception atbottom unproved and incapable of generating conviction, became a ruleof life, made effective by training and control. The ruling powers andtheir controls have given way, and their dry brittleness is revealed. 

We have not succeeded in finding a substitute for social ethics in anidealized type of national character. The imagination of the Westernnations, like those of antiquity, has shaped ideal types which theybelieve or would wish themselves to resemble; they know what they meanby "esprit gaulois, " or "English character, " or "American Democracy, "while, in accordance with the problematic character of our being, weGermans, except for the statuesque heroes of legendary times, orcertain historic but inimitable figures, have conceived or poeticallycreated no character of which we can say that it embodies thecollective spirit of Germany. 

The super-ethical doctrine of the being, the growth and the empire ofthe soul has been laid down by us, but there are as yet few into whoseconsciousness it has penetrated; the transformation of thought andfeeling which must proceed from it will not lay hold of the massesdirectly, but will filter continually from one social stratum toanother. 

The recognized values of social judgment! It sounds so abstract, soremote from practice, that one might well believe we were landed againin the cloudland of festal oratory and the emotions of the leadingarticle. The voluntary recognition of an invisible authority! And thisafter we have shattered the visible, and are living in the midst ofintellectual anarchy and moral Nihilism! And yet moral valuations, simple, binding, and on the level of social judgment, are near enoughto be within our grasp. 

Are not all the four quarters of the world to-day talking aboutDemocracy? Have not we ourselves got tired of this word, forbiddentill a year ago--tired, even in circles where the modest word"Liberal" was never pronounced without a frown? And what doesDemocracy mean? Do we take it in the merely negative sense, that oneis no longer obliged to put up with things? Or in the meagre sense, that responsibility goes by favour, and that the majority must decide?Or the dubious sense, that we are yearning to make our way through asham Socialism to the Dollar Republic?

It is not the form of government, it is the form of society, thatdetermines the spirit of a land. There is no democratic form ofsociety, for democracy can be in league with capitalism, withsocialism, or even with the class of clubs and castes. The unspokenfundamental conception which gives significance and stability both tothe forms of a democratic constitution and to those of an organicsociety is called Solidarity--that is to say, cohesion and the senseof community. Solidarity means that each man does not come first inhis own eyes, but before God and State and himself each man must standand be answerable for all, and all for each. 

In this sense of solidarity the dominion of the majority over theminority is not an object to be striven for but an evil to be avoided;the true object of a solid democracy is the dominion of a people overitself, not by reckoning up the relative strength of its variousinterests, but by virtue of the spirit and of the will which it setsfree. In this sense of solidarity no society can be based onhereditary monopolies either of capital or of cultivation; nor can itbe delivered over to the terrorism of vocations and unions which, under the leaderships of shouters, claim the right whenever theyplease, to strangle indispensable industries; nor can it be based ondemagogic flattery of excitable mobs. Every born man must from hiscradle onwards have the same right to existence; he must be shelteredand fostered as he grows up, and be free to choose his lot. Everyoccupation must be open to him, except that he must not encroach onthe sphere of another man's liberty. The standard of his activity isnot to be fixed by birth or privilege or force or cunning or the glibtongue, but again, by spirit and by will. 

To-day, while cultivation of the spirit is still a class-monopoly, itcannot form any standard of creative capacity. And yet it has beendemonstrated that so powerful is the passion for culture in a spiritwhich is in any degree qualified for it, that even to-day it iscapable, by self-education, of surmounting some of the artificialbarriers. There was not, to my knowledge, any illiterate among thePrussian or German Ministers of the new era, and the one of them whoexcused his deficiencies of language with the class-monopoly ofeducation was in the wrong, for any man of normal capacity might inten years' practice of popular oratory have learned the elements ofsyntax. 

When access to the cultivation of the German spirit has become acommon right of the whole people, Culture will become, if not the signat least the presupposition of creative activity. The proof ofcapacity will then cease to be settled either between agitators andthe masses, or in the dimness of privileged chanceries, but in theproductive competition of men of high intellectual endowment. 

Society will not be divided by classes and castes, it will not begraded according to pedigree or possessions, it will not be ruled byseparate interests; by ideas or by the masses; it will be an orderedbody--ordered by spirit, by will, by service and responsibility. 

Any one who does not accept this self-created and self-renewing order, and who at the same time rejects the old, is simply working for thedominion of force and chance. A society can no more remain permanentlywithout order than the staff of a factory or the crew of a ship. Onlyinstead of an organic order we may have an accidental and arbitrary, an order of the personal type, springing from the dexterity shown insome favourable moment, maintaining itself by force, and seeking toperpetuate itself in some form of hereditary oligarchy. 

An order of the priestly and hierarchical type is no longer thinkableto-day, nor can one of the peasant type come into question in a landof urban industry. Whoever wishes to see an organic self-determiningand self-regenerating order of society, has therefore to choosebetween the military order, resting upon disciplined bodily capacity, or the mercantile and capitalist order which rests upon business-senseand egoistic alertness, or the demagogic order which rests upon therhetorical domination of the masses, and does not last long as it soonturns to violence and oligarchy, or finally the order of culture, resting upon spirit, character, and education. 

This last is not merely the only suitable one for us and the only onewhich is worthy of our past; it will also in time become the generalorder of society prevailing over all the world. In the vision of thisorder we recognize the mission that Prussia neglected, though it laywithin its grasp for a hundred years; what it neglected and the rockon which it foundered. 

The greatness of Prussian policy since 1713 lay in its premonition andappreciation of the principle of mechanism even before it becamecommon to all the world. Organization and improvement, the war machineand money, science, practicality and conscientiousness--all this isclearly mechanization seen from the political side. 

The early application of these principles was a stroke of genius farin advance of the then condition of the world. Seen from thisstandpoint, all the rest of the continental world, not yet mechanized, and burdened with the relics of mediævalism, Cæsarism and clericalism, seemed torpid and lost in illusions: arbitrary, inaccurate andslovenly. With short interruptions this Prusso-central point of viewwas maintained until the middle of the World-War; and not quiteunjustly, for Prussia remained in every respect ahead of other powersin the department of mechanization. 

For a hundred years the Prussian principles had a monopoly of success;elsewhere they were scarcely understood and much less imitated. Thencame Napoleon. 

He took over the mechanistic principle and handled it as never a manhad done before; he became the mechanizer of the world. At the sametime he was something mightier than that: he was the heir of theFrench idea of spiritual and popular liberty. 

Prussia fell, and would have fallen, even if its mechanism had notgrown rusty. Its leaders learnt their lessons from France and England, they set on foot a liberation of the people by departmental authorityand a liberation of the spirit by the people; they put new life intothe mechanism, and they conquered with the help of England as we havelately seen France conquer with the help of America. 

But here came a parting of the ways. It was possible to pursue eitherthe way of mechanization or that of the liberation of the spirit. Prussia did neither; it stood still. In the place of the liberation ofthe spirit came the reaction; in the place of mechanization came thebureaucracy. On the rest of the Continent, too, the movement forpolitical mechanization was stifled, the force that stifled it beingthe uprising economic movement. 

Bismarck was aware of the untried forces that lay in the system ofpolitical mechanization. The world, as we looked at it from ourPrussian window, seemed as loose and slovenly as ever, and it was so. Once again, with a mighty effort, the Prussian mechanism was revivedand the movement of the bourgeoisie towards liberty and the life ofthe spirit was repressed. This was called "realism" in politics, andthe estimate was a just one. There was no progress to be made withprofessional Liberalism; but with Krupp and Roon one organizedvictories. As in Frederick's time the slovenly Continent had to giveway, Prussia mounted to the climax of her fortunes, and won Germany. 

And again there was a parting of the ways; but this time there was noone to stand for civic and spiritual freedom. People believed they hadall they wanted of it; democracy was discredited and broken, theprofessors were political realists, success followed the side ofmechanization, which was rightly supposed to be linked with thedynasty, and mechanization in the economic sphere drew to its side thehope of gain. 

Bismarck died in the midst of anxieties, but to the end he had noscruples. The two systems of mechanization were at their zenith, andthe other countries looked, in political affairs, as slovenly as ever. One was wearing itself out in parliamentary conflicts, another had nobattle-cruisers, another was lacking in cannon, or in recruits, or inrailways, or in finances; the trains never came in up to time, everywhere one found public opinion or the Press interfering inprocess of law or in the administration, everywhere there werescandals; in Prussian Germany alone was everything up to the mark. 

Only one thing was overlooked. The mechanization of economics hadbecome a common possession for everybody. Starting from this and withthe methods and experiences attached to it, it was possible also forother countries, if necessary, to mechanize their politics or, as wesay now, to militarize them. And this could be done with even morelife and vigour than in Prussia, whose organization was therebelieved to be inimitable and where the principle of mechanism was, asit were, stored up in tins and in some places was obviously gettingmouldy. In the matter of Freedom, however, the other peoples wereahead of us, and to the political isolation of Prussia spiritualisolation was now added. 

In the encircling fog which prevailed on economic developments therewas not a single statesman who recognized that Prussian principles hadceased to be a monopoly, or an advantage, not to mention a conceptionof genius. This lack of perception was the political cause of the war. Instead of renewing ourselves inwardly through freedom and the spirit, and carrying on a defensive policy as quietly, discreetly, andinconspicuously as possible, we took to arming and hurrahing. Worsethan any playing of false notes was the mistake we made in key and intempo: D major, _Allegro_, _Marcia_, _Fortissimo_, with cymbals andtrumpets!

To-day we have no longer a choice before us, only a decision. Theperiod of mechanical Prussianization is over for us, the period of themechanical policy of Force is over for all the world, although theheliographs of Versailles seem to reflect it high above the horizon. It is not a capitalistic Peace of God as imagined by the internationalpolice which has now begun; it is the social epoch. In this epoch thepeople will live and will range themselves according to the strengthof the ideas which they stand for. 

It is not enough for us to become Germans instead of Prussians; noteven if, as it were to be desired, we should succeed in rescuing fromthe collapse of Prussia her genuine virtues of practicality, order andduty. It is not enough to brew some soulless mixture out of theworn-out methods of the Western bourgeoisie and the unripe attempts ofEastern revolutionaries. It is not enough--no, it will lead us todestruction quicker than any one believes--to blunder along with thedisgusting bickerings of interests and the complacent narrowness ofofficialism, talking one day of the rate of exchange, another of ourdebts, and the next of the food question, plugging one hole with thestopping of another and lying down at night with a sigh of relief:Well, something's got done; all will come right. 

No, unthinking creatures that you are; nothing will come right untilyou drop your insincere chatter, your haggling, your agitating andcompromising, and begin to think. Here is a people that has lost thebasis of its existence, because, in its blind faith in authority, itstaked that existence on prosperity and power; and both are gone. Doyou want to stake _our_ existence, on ships, soldiers, mines, trade-connexions, which we no longer possess, or upon the soil, ofwhich we have not enough, or upon our broken will to work? Are we tobe the labour-serfs and the serfage stud-farm of the world? Only onThoughts and Ideals can our existence be staked. Where is yourthought? Where is the thought of Germany?

We can and must live only by becoming what we were designed to be, what we were about to be, what we failed to become: a people of theSpirit, the Spirit among the peoples of mankind. That is the thoughtof Germany. 

This thought is shaping the New Society--the society of the spirit andthe cultivation of the spirit, the only one which can hold its groundin the new epoch, and which fulfils it. 

This is why we have been endowed with a character whose will is weakin external things and strong in inward responsibility; why depth andunderstanding, practicality and uprightness, many-sidedness andindividuality, power of work and invention, imagination and aspirationhave been bestowed upon us, in order that we may fulfil these things. For what do these qualities, as a whole, betoken? Not the conqueror, not the statesman, not the worldling, and not the man of business; itis a narrow and trivial misuse of all faculty for us to pretend torepresent these types among the nations. They betoken the labourers ofthe spirit; and far as we are from being a nation of thinkers andpoets, it is nevertheless our right and our high calling to be athinking nation among the nations. 

But on what, you may ask with scorn, is this thinking nation to live?With all its wisdom, will it not be reduced to beggary and starvation?

No--it will live. That people which amid a century of world-revolutionis able to form for itself a stable, well-balanced, ordered and highlydeveloped form of society will be one that works and produces. Allaround there will be quarrelling and conflict, there will be littlework and little production. For the next decade the question will be, not where is the demand but where is the supply?

The countries are laid waste, as Germany was after the Thirty Years'War; only we do not as yet recognize it, so long as the fever lasts wedo not notice the decline. 

Production, thought-out and penetrated with spirit, on the part of ahighly developed society, and combined with labour-fellowship, is morethan valuable production or cheap production; it is somethingexemplary and essential. And this applies not only to productionitself but to the methods of production, to the technique, theschooling, the organization, the manner of thinking. 

It is a petty thing to say that we were destroyed out of envy. Why didnot envy destroy America and England? The world regarded us at oncewith admiration and with repulsion; with admiration for our systematicand laborious ways, with repulsion for our tradesman-likeobtrusiveness, the brusque and dangerous character of our leadershipand the ostentatious servility with which we endured it. If it hadbeen possible anywhere outside of our naked, mercantile and nationalegoism to discover a German idea, it would have been respected. 

The German idea of cultivation of the spirit will win something for uswhich we have not known for a century, and the scope of which wecannot yet measure; people will freely appreciate us, they willfurther us and follow us on our way. We have no idea what it means fora people to have these sympathetic forces at its side, as France hadin its creation of forms, England and America in civilization anddemocracy, Russia in Slavonic orthodoxy and the neutral States intheir internationalism. 

There is no fear: we shall live, and more than live. For the firsttime for centuries we shall again be conscious of a mission, andaround all our internal oppositions will be twined a bond which willbe something more than a bond of interest. 

The goal of the world-revolution upon which we have now entered meansin its material aspect the melting of all strata of society into one. In its transcendental aspect it means redemption: redemption of thelower strata to freedom and to the spirit. No one can redeem himselfbut every one can redeem another. Class for class, man for man: thusis a people redeemed. Yet in each case there must be readiness and ineach there must be good-will. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 34: 1918, when the revolution in Germany broke out at Kiel. ]

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THE WORLD'S ILLUSION. By J. WASSERMANN. Translated by Ludwig Lewisohn. Two volumes. (Second printing. )

One of the most remarkable creative works of our time, revolving aboutthe experiences of a man who sums up the wealth and culture of our ageyet finds them wanting. The first volume depicts the life of the upperclasses of European society, the second is a very Inferno of theSlums; and the whole mirrors, with extraordinary insight, the beautyand sorrow, the power and weakness of our social and spiritual world. "A human comedy in the great sense, which no modern can afford not tohear. "--H. W. Boynton, in the _Weekly Review_. 

PEOPLE. By PIERRE HAMP. Translated by James Whitall. With anIntroduction by Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant. 

Introducing one of the most significant writers of France, himself aworking man, who in these stories of the French underworld expressesthe new self-consciousness of the worker's outlook. 

THE NEW SOCIETY. By WALTER RATHENAU. Translated by Arthur Windham. 

One of Germany's most influential thinkers and men of action presentshis vision of the new society emerging out of the War. 

DECADENCE AND OTHER ESSAYS ON THE CULTURE OF IDEAS. By REMY DEGOURMONT. Translated by William Aspenwall Bradley. 

The first authorized version of the critical work of one of the greataesthetic thinkers of France. 

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THE PATRIOT. By HEINRICH MANN. Translated by Ernest A. Boyd. 

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THE REFORM OF EDUCATION. By GIOVANNI GENTILE. With an Introduction byBENEDETTO CROCE. Translated by Dino Bigongiari. 

A new interpretation of the meaning of education, by one who shareswith Croce the leadership of Italian thought to-day. 

A POET'S LOVES: FROM THE UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS OF VICTOR HUGO. ByLOUIS BARTHOU. Translated by Daniel Créhange Rosenthal. 

A striking, not to say sensational, revelation of the intimate privatelife of a great poet, by an ex-Premier of France. 

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