/ THE GERMAN SOUL " A man's earnestness should be so attempered as to become a gentle longing, not a bitter vehemence.' " Let a man continually paint within liis heart Thine image, O Lord Jesus — of Thee, eternal sunshine — how Thou didst always bear Thyself with a gentle, genial and benign earnestness." Instructions of Brother David of Augsburg to the first German Franciscan Novices, about a.d. 1250. (From Pfeiffer's Deutsche Mystiker, vol. i. 1845, pp. 319, 345-) THE GERMAN SOUL IN ITS ATTITUDE TOWARDS ETHICS AND CHRISTIANITY THE STATE AND WAR TWO STUDIES BY BARON FRIEDRICH von HUGEL, LL.D. Author of " The Mystical Element of Religion*^ and " Eternal Life " LONDON, PARIS ^ TORONTO J. M. DENT & SONS LIMITED NEW YORK: E. P. BUTTON y CO. MCMXVI All rights reserved PREFACE The following little book consists substan- tially of two distinct Studies, as these appeared, the first in The Church Quarterly Review for January 1915, and the second, in two instal- ments, in The Quest for April 191 5 and January 1 91 6. I have here to thank the respective editors for their kind permissions thus to reprint those articles in book form — in the case of the last article, at so short a distance of time. I have learnt not a little from various criticisms, public and private, and from my own further observation and study, since the earlier of these Papers was written. I have here attempted to incorporate the chief results, by means of many small, and of three or four large, omissions, insertions, or changes. Thus I have dropped the story of Margarete Peter, at the end of the first stage of The German Soul and the Great War, because three mutually independent competent readers failed to find it truly pertinent or fair. And I 5 3424S3 6 THE GERMAN SOUL have added a section on the latest Troeltsch publications (pp. 74-107) ; I have amplified the argument that finds a quite undesigned but powerful connection between the early Protestant Puritanism and our present-day gigantic Capitalism and Industrialism (pp. 180-184); and I have now insisted, before the four things as to which we can act or hope as regards Germany's self-regeneration, upon the two things which I consider we ought most carefully to avoid (pp. 189-193). An indication of the precise circumstances which occasioned and moulded these essays may possibly add something to their interest. It was only in July 191 3 that I first studied Naumann's booklet — ^his Brieje uher Religion, The thing struck and stimulated, indeed stung me, greatly; and I waited thenceforth for an opportunity to publish an analysis, and allocation, of what aroused in me my large admiration for so much in the man, and my profound dissent from the pathetically abso- lute dualism exhibited by this most charac- teristic latter-day German soul. Professor Arthur Headlam gave me my chance by his invitation to treat, in The Church Quarterly^ the general question of the relations between Christianity and War. The resulting Paper PREFACE 7 was first read by me to a private society for the study of religious questions in December 1 9 14, and could thus benefit by various criticisms and endorsements before appearing in public, during the following month. It was, some half-year further back, only a few days before the outbreak of the war, that I received a long letter from a still young, highly cultivated. South German scholar and lecturer — a man who knew English and England well, ever since his student days (of some ten years before) when he had already been immersed in English subjects; a delicately religious spirit, whose Protes- tantism was greatly softened and suffused by large Catholic sympathies. It was a long, touchingly earnest, plea in favour of the justice of the German claims, especially of a cultural kind, and centred in the strange assertion and argument that German culture had by now, as a sheer matter of fact, fully assimilated all that deserved to live in the several civilisations of Greece and Rome, Italy, France, and England; and hence that the spreading and the substitution, by means even of the force of arms, of this German culture, now thus become the legitimate heir (because the actual quintessence) of all 8 THE GERMAN SOUL those other cultures, was both no more than justice on the part of Germany towards her- self, and no kind of loss, but rather a great gain in fruitful concentration, for Europe and humanity at large. Another long letter reached me, after the war had lasted some three months, from a distinguished British professor of Philosophy who, for many a year a distinguished inter- preter of Hegel, found himself dismayed and bereft of his bearings at what he felt to be the barbarous excesses of the German mentality now at work. He wanted especially to know how English and German could ever come together again, if one after another of the professed exponents of the higher German mind voiced thus a passionate unreason ? And did not all these violences even suggest that the human mind, its laws and needs, is, after all, not one and the same throughout mankind ? Probably the worst, certainly the longest, of such repulsive shouts of sheer passion on the part of German professors of high standing, has, however, occurred only during these last months. Professor Eduard Meyer's England, — 7he Development of its State and Policy and the War against Germany (Stuttgart) PREFACE 9 consists of over two hundred pages of the kind of vituperation which, before the war, we could hear, most assuredly unmoved, from the lips of the least educated of Hyde Park orators, against anything or everything that happened to rouse the shouter's bile. But here it is one of the most esteemed of specialists in ancient history who thus loses all sense of proportion, of cause and effect, indeed of fact and of the educated man's responsibility. Several of the more important German news- papers have, indeed, warmly protested against this sorry exhibition. It was Mr. G. R. S. Mead who gave me the means of attempting a public answer to these two private letters, by his request to furnish J he Quest with a study of the present mentality of Germany — as to where and how its strength and its weakness helped and hindered an eventual change and mutual understanding. A sad family trouble produced a break of nine months between the composition of the two parts of this Study. Yet it happened that well-nigh half a year of this time (March 8 to August 26, 191 5) had to be spent in Rome; and there I had constant opportunities of studying the mentality of " Real-PoHtik," as this had been re-awakened and confirmed 10 THE GERMAN SOUL by Germany, during these last fifty years, amongst a people that (no doubt largely because of the political miseries of Italy in those distant times) itself produced, four centuries ago, the cold, contracted Machia- velli as truly as, some sixty years since, it gave to mankind the warm, world-embracing Mazzini. And it is doubtless due to the close, largely poignant, experiences of that time that the second stage of this, my second Study, owes whatever it may have of patience, penetration, and pensiveness more adequate to the great theme than appears in the first stage. I have taken care to mention the articles which have helped me on particular points, in these Studies themselves where I reach those points. But it may be well to give here together the exact titles of the books and papers that have done most towards stimulat- ing or articulating within me the problems or convictions that run throughout this little book. Busy as I specially was with the comparison of the German and English mentalities in these fundamental matters, it is only natural that it was German and English works that particularly helped me, even though I was much attracted by the PREFACE II three finely tempered articles on the war by M. Emile Boutroux; and again by such striking close reasoning as Guilielmo Ferrero's study of the last days of July 1914. The books and papers, then, which have most helped me, taken roughly in the order of their first publication, are as follows : Otto (von) Gierke, " Die Staats- und Kor- porationslehre des Alterthums und des Mittelalters und ihre Aufnahme in Deutsch- land " (vol. iii. of his Das Deutsche Genos- senschaftsrecht)^ Berlin, 1881. Especially pp. 501-644. Von Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Ages (the English translation of these pages), with Introduction by F. W. Maitland, Cam- bridge, 191 3. A magnificent pioneer work, deeply learned, yet utterly alive with thought, and thoroughly original yet free from all eccentricity. Maitland's Introduction is not unworthy of it. J. N. Figgis, Studies in Political Thought : From Gerson to Grotius, Cambridge, 1907. Still the richest of this author's remarkable studies in Canon Law and political theory. The later chapters especially have aided me much. A. L. Smith, Church and State in the Middle 12 THE GERMAN SOUL Ages, Oxford, 191 3 (the text dates from 1908). Even more than Figgis inspired by Gierke and Maitland — a nobly generous book that only fails in its judgment as to the inevitable- ness, for the papal system, of the great abuse so vividly chronicled and so rightly condemned. Such pages as the description of the Bene- dictine chronicler Matthew Paris are a sheer delight even after a dozen readings. Bernard Bosanquet, 7he Philosophical Theory of the State, London, 1910. This admirable demonstration of the State, as other and more than the simple sum-total of its members, suffers only slightly by occa- sional statements, quite contrary to the deliberate intention of the book, indicative of the State as, after all, essentially charac- terised by force and constraint. Ernst Troeltsch, Grundprohleme der Ethik, Tubingen, 1902 (reprinted in his Gesammelte Schriften, vol. ii., Tubingen, 1913, pp. 552-672). Ernst Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der Christli- chen Kirchen und Gruppen, Tubingen, 191 2. Especially pp. 178-430 (the " Mediaeval Social Doctrines ") and pp. 965-986 (" Outlook and Conclusion "). I have attempted to give some account of the astonishing mastery and penetration of PREFACE 13 these deeply religious works in The Construc- tive Quarterly^ New York and Oxford, for March and December 1914: " On the Specific Genius and Capacity of Christianity, studied in connection with the works of Professor Ernst Troeltsch." Ernst Troeltsch, " Die deutsche Idee von der Freiheit" and " Privatmoral und Staats- moral," two papers in Die Neue Rundschau, Berlin, January and February 191 6. These articles are considered here, pp. 74-107. Friedrich Naumann, Briefe uher Religion, 13-15, Tausend, Berlin-Schoneberg, Buch- handlung der Eilje, 19 10. This is discussed at length in my first Study here. Of the older literature, it is the great sections of the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas especially given to Law, the Law and the Gospel, Nature and Supernature, Church and State, which, in these last years, in spite of a form almost as repellent as Spinoza's, have taught me magnificent facts and cate- gories, still only imperfectly apprehended in most modern works. And the Enchiridion Symbolorum, Definitionum et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum of Denziger, Frei- burg, ed. 191 3, gives in full the noble Encyclical Im^nortale Dei of Pope Leo XI IL 14 THE GERMAN SOUL And here I would gratefully thank the many friends who have so largely helped me with these Studies, especially Professor F. C. Burkitt and Mr. Edwyn Bevan — the latter also by loans of the most recent German works, accessible only through such a worker for Government. And finally, a word as to the precise subject matter and point of the following Studies, and as to the spirit and aim that inform them. I have been grappling, now for some eighteen months, not with Germany's claims to terri- torial expansion, whether in Europe or outside of it; nor again with Ethics or with Chris- tianity, or with the State or with War, any or all of these forces taken separately. True, I very sincerely believe that territorial expan- sion in Europe, of any one distinct race over any other markedly different one, has become, for the present day, a moral wrong and a political mistake; and, again, that territorial expansion, for any European power, outside of Europe, is justifiable nowadays only by the conferment of sterling and large benefits, not necessarily upon the races thus subjecting, but upon the races thus subjected. I am uncertain whether official Germany is finally PREFACE IS determined upon expansion in Europe of the kind described, but I am very sure she is mistaken and to be resisted in so far as, and for as long as ever, she is thus determined. And I am certain, as to any further great colonial territorial expansion (over and above the colonies she possessed in August 1914, amounting in area to five times the entire German Empire), both that official Germany is fully determined to achieve it, and that she has never shown any aptitude to rule natives with advantage to those natives, nor indeed any serious perception of the need for such results as the sole decisive justification of such expansion. Yet, even if I be wrong in both these matters of specially German fact, the full point and poignancy of my central problems would remain — as to what are the relations, in the actual nature of things, between General Ethics and Christianity; and again and especially, between such General Ethics and Christianity on the one hand, and the State and War on the other hand; and whether, in sober earnest, the " mixed " answer is sheer hypocrisy, and the " pure " solution (now so dominant in Ger- many) is alone the sad indeed, yet final, truth. I have found the problem to present. i6 THE GERMAN SOUL whilst I was thus immersed in it, precisely those characteristics which always show them- selves where the human spirit pursues, or rather is pursued by, not simple theory but rich reality, not its own sorry fancies but the inexorable fact and law of life as it is in its depths and interconnections. For during the days or weeks of weariness the entire problem would (except for the presence, all the same, of a dull yet obstinate sense of underlying reality) readily seem a, sentimental phantom; but after persistence in the toil indicated as fruitful during the past moments of light, it would, in the moments of the light's return, reappear, with unconquerable resiHency, as inextricably bound up with all that makes human life worth living to a would-be human being at all, and as rich with various, quite unexpected, applications. And even if the practice of all us poor mortals fell equally short of the noblest requirements of our souls, that would only render such studies and conclusions all the more necessary : we should then merely have to strive after a repentance in ourselves as great as we now hope for it in the others. After all, the Tu quoque argument is never much more than an adjournment of serious PREFACE 17 investigation. Better far, if we labour to attain to a vivid perception of the intrinsic nature of Ethics and of Christianity, and of the State and War — of the interrelations between these three great complexes and forces; and if we then examine how, where, and why these realities are rightly or wrongly apprehended by the German and the English mentalities. May these Studies help on, in spite of their limitations, faults, and repeti- tions, such a penetration, and thus give us, during these strenuous, most costly times, a still fuller sincerity of conviction, a rock-firm steadfastness of will, and a wise and warm faith in the special and essential contribution which our race and country are destined to make towards the development of such a universally ethical outlook and practice and of the consequent happiness of mankind. FRIEDRICH VON HUGEL. Kensington, March i, 191 6. CONTENTS PAGE Christianity in Face of War: The "Realist" AND THE True Solutions OF THE Problem . . 29 Introduction : The general sense of uneasiness, indica- tive of the reality and difficulty of the problem. Limitation of following inquiry. To be conducted in three stages ....... 29 I. Leading sayings, temper and practice of Jesus and of the primitive Christians in face of the State, Patriotism, War; and spirit of Roman rule and average West European present-day conception of same things . . . . . • 3 1 1. The teaching and practice of Jesus . . .31 (a) The three main stages of Israelitish and Jewish beliefs as to War. The religious and political parties in Our Lord's own day. The practice of John the Baptist. (6) The attitude of Our Lord Himself: combat, but of a spiritual kind. One single saying of apparently contrary import. He is assuredly neither Zealot nor Essene. He does not shrink from using force Himself. His love of physical nature and of the human complexes. His intense abstraction from all things tem- porary and earthly, free from any gnostic or anarchist instincts concerning them. (c) Practice of the Apostolic times. Characteristics of their missionary work. First Christian com- munity at Jerusalem, and its withdrawal to Pella in a.d. 70. The Christians' attitude during and after the revolt of Bar Kochba. The Revelation of St. John: its various ele- ments — warlike Messianism, and tender respect for the abiding variety of nations, each requiring the other even before God. 2. Main definitions and conceptions of the State and War, in Western Europe, from Roman times to now . . . . . '43 19 20 THE GERMAN SOUL PAGE (a) Cicero's definition of the State, as approved by St. Augustine. (6) The development under Roman Empire, upon the whole unfavourable to true personalistic conception of the State. (c) The specifically Mediaeval System, organic throughout, with each wider complex respect- ful of the narrower. Aquinas and Dante. {d) The Roman Canonists Sinibaldo Fieschi and Johannes Andreae revert to the non-personal- istic conception of the State. But no such conception defined as of faith by Roman Church. Slow but sure growth of sense, at least in Anglo-Saxon countries, of belief in reality of " national sins," " national con- science." The noble Encyclical Immortale Dei of Pope Leo XIII. The central affirma- tions of the Roman Catholic Church imply and require a personalistic conception. {e) The conception of War always follows that of the State, Mr. Hilaire Belloc's definition of War. II. Confrontation of career and teachings of Friedrich Naumann with facts and doctrines reached in Stage 1 48 1. Friedrich Naumann's antecedents, career, and general attitude ..... 48 2. Passages from his Brief e iiber Religion (1910) in illustration of how he combines a thing- conception of the State with a personalistic conception of God and Man, the Family and the Church ...... 50 3. Reinsistence upon, and fuller articulation and defence of, the personalistic conception of the State, in form of a critical analysis of Naumann's arguments . . . • S9 (i) Introductory observations as to the three in- fluences struggling each with the others within Naumann's mind .... 59 (2) More detailed examination of Naumann's arguments ...... 60 (a) The Darwinism here, undiscriminating and excessive. CONTENTS 21 PAGE (b) No stage or side of man's life, and no human complex, simply pre-human, non-moral. (c) Biblical criticism and Our Lord's teaching. The Golden Rule, and the specifically Christian Ethics, not identical or co- extensive ; only the former directly con- cerns the State. III. Analysis of the two war-articles of Professor Ernst Troeltsch, in further elucidation of positions reached here ...... 74 74 1. Troeltsch's article, "The German Idea of Freedom,' January 1916 ..... ( 1 ) His irritation against what he feels as the hypo crisy of the Idealism professed by the Allies Yet he ends himself with the noblest idealism also for the State . .... 76 (2) Points on which Troeltsch finds an objective difference between the Western Allies and the Central Empires: (a) Aestheticism against development of sheer force ; (6) Political constitutionalism against political bureaucracy ...... 78 (3) Two quite different points held in these Studies to be dominant, if object sought be the regaining by Germany of friends amongst the Allies : a point of sheer fact, and a point of method. (a) The point of fact: the incurably " mixed " attitude of the Englishman to the State, illustrated by Lord Cromer's instinct and by a pioneer Governor's test of his own work. (6) The point as to method : the State, if taken as simply thing and force at beginning, cannot be found personal istic and ethical at the end. 79 2. Troeltsch's article, " Personal and State Morality," February 191 6. Strange prejudices as to large happenings in this war, but deep penetration into the great questions of principle involved. 87 (i) His main positions: (a) Two different valuations, ethical and non- ethical, of State represented in both camps. (b) Distinction between defensive and aggressive wars unsatisfactory. 22 THE GERMAN SOUL PAGE (c) Solution found in distinction, as elaborated by the great German philosophers and historians, between Private Morality and State Morality. (d) These two Moralities not identical, for four reasons. (e) Yet State Morality, a real Morality; in what this Morality consists. (/) Resemblances between the two Moralities. ig) Practical application of principles thus gained: general application; application to the great groups of contemporary European world — the Imperialists, the Democrats, the Conservatives ..... 88 (2) Four counter-currents operative amongst sup- porters of Troeltsch's main contentions, found to have been passed over or even endorsed by Troeltsch : (a) The Chauvinist minor premise added, e.g., by Fichte, to the richly comprehensive major premise propounded by himself. (b) Strict limitation by Ranke of all recognition of other States by European States, to States of European system only. (c) Strangely close parallelism assumed by Fichte and Ranke between political and military power, and cultural and spiritual worth. {d) These exclusivenesses and hardnesses ren- dered incurable through their proclamation, by Hegel, as direct self-manifestations of the Divine Life ...... 96 (3) Troeltsch at his deepest and best : Christianity, its intrinsic nature and perennial power ; hopes as to religious effects of the war; the three abiding constituents of all genuinely moral conceptions of the State . . .105 IV. Rules and Conclusions . . . . .107 I. Three practical rules that flow from conclusions reached ....... 107 (i) Necessity and reality of other life. Elimination of all cynicism as to partial, halting heroisms really discoverable in human life . .108 (2) Possibility and desirableness of a growing in- fusion of even some supernatural morality CONTENTS 23 PAGE into State, already in itself a complex ani- mated by a natural" Ethic . . .108 (3) Necessity, nature, duty, danger of Church- complex: importance of careful insistence upon its double function — the other-worldly function being always kept primary . .109 2. Twofold implications and affinities of Our Lord's teaching. Its metaphysical basis. Transcend- ence and Immanence. Polarity of the soul's life. The Church, the exponent of the specific- ally Christian life; but the State also essen- tially though differently ethical — the warder of the Golden Rule . . . . -113 The German Soul AND THE Great War . . .118 Introduction: Much brilliant writing already extant on War and its causes. Massive existence and peculiar character of present German Real-Politik now fully proved and illustrated. Restriction of this Study to vivid elucidation and analysis (by means of generally German half of the writer's own blood and mentality) of general German charac- teristics that have permitted or favoured the large domination of the Prussian spirit; and of the other general German characteristics which, we can trust, will eventually overcome that spirit. The Study to consist of four Sections, with pause and * recapitulation between second and third . . 118 I. Qualifications of writer. Paternal ancestors. Personal contacts with Austria and Germany. German mentality in some matters, warmly English sym- pathies in others. German friends, teachers, books . 121 II. General characteristics of the German soul . .125 1. Imperious need of System, Weltanschauung. Illustrations of this, in contrast with English distrust of all theory . . . 12$ 2. Consequences of this fundamental characteristic: great results; excesses and absurdities. But even the excesses largely redeemed by this their root cause . . . . . .128 3. Tendency to unconscious Mythology, Pantheism and Monism. And to Machiavellianism. Examples : Hegel and Schelling, especially in 24 THE GERMAN SOUL PAGE their youth. Frederick II. of Prussia. Noble revolt against Napoleonic domination. But " Realism " of Louis XIV. and Napoleon towards Germany, repeated by Germany in 1870 against France . . . . .132 4. Attempted explanation of how Prussian " Real- ism " could so dominate Germans generally. The Germans not a political race. Their great successes in military and mercantile matters misled their over-systematising minds to hold themselves called to a great political world-rule. Errors involved in this reasoning . . . . , .138 5. Double cause of German bitterness against Eng- land. The sudden, immense material success of 1870 has turned the German Soul, essen- tially attracted to great things, away to fascination by big things . . . .143 6. Germans, especially Prussians, are being proved in this War to be more systematically cruel than can similarly be proved against their western neighbours, especially the English. But whether Germans, in themselves and where not long obsessed and roused by racial or other non-egotistic visions and passions, more cruel than are other races, doubtful for two reasons: The German not self-conscious in the English way. Illustrations. High pitch, strain, and hence danger, of the German's psychic life: illustration from case of Nietzsche, and his great influence over German youths. Rohde, representative of sane, recuperative forces of German soul . 145 Short recapitulation of Sections I. and II. ; great part played by Philosophy and Doctrinal Religion, and their doctrinal negations, in life-history of the German soul . . -154 III. Analysis of main helps and hindrances afforded, to the strengths and weaknesses discovered, by the chief German groups of religious and philosophical affirmation or negation. Four such groups to be considered . . . . . . .158 CONTENTS 25 PAGE 1. The Roman Catholic position. Its strength and weakness have passed through three stages: First stage, up to about 800 a.d. Second stage, up to about 1240 a.d. (this stage nearest to the ideal). Third stage, prevalent down to our own times. Attitude of Roman Catholic authorities, peoples and parties during this war . . . . -159 2. The Protestant position, in so far as still a definite doctrine and distinct organisation. The unsatisfactory character of its philosophical antecedents. Luther, on the matters in question, far less satisfactory than Calvin; his brutal strain. The contrary, astonishingly subtle, central current in Luther, Doubtless deeply religious motive at work here; yet result, a subtly segregating, indocile spirit . 166 3. The Idealist position. This the most specifically German attitude, tending to increase both strengths and weaknesses of German soul. Fichte chiefly chosen to illustrate latter influence. Passages from his Reden an die deutsche Nation, 1808: as to the new educa- tion; as to the prerogative of the Germanic peoples retaining Germanic speech. Reflec- tions upon these passages. Three prominent characteristics of Hegel's thought, which undoubtedly tend to strengthen the German weaknesses . , . . . .172 4. The Materialistic position, more influential in deflecting the German soul than all the weaknesses of other three positions combined. Invasion of this spirit traceable in four waves : the industrial invasion from America (the Protestant Puritanism unconsciously prepares the human instruments of excessive Industrialism) ; the mathematico - physical scientific advance; the dangerously rapid politico - military success of 1870; the pre- sent-day " the -State -is -Force " mentality. America and England greatly responsible for all this ...... 179 26 THE GERMAN SOUL PAGE IV. The things we should not do; and the points, in the now dominant outlook of the German soul, at which we can help, and should hope for a change or development . . . . . .189 1. Two things we must not do . . . .189 (i) We must not ourselves become infected by the very spirit which we deplore in the Germans. Warning example of J. A. Cramb's book Germany and England . . .189 (2) We must not lump everything in the German together, as though all were evil, or as though we did not require contribution of the speci- fically German best. Examples of such a spirit. But country, on the whole, remark- ably free from such a temper. Illustrations. 191 2. Four points at which we can help towards, t • can hope for, a change in the German soul . .193 (i) Germany must be beaten in this war, in a quite definite, great degree and way. Two-fold difficulty of attaining this. Yet this quite possible to Allies. Such a fact produced by ourselves alone could furnish starting-point towards German soul's self-interrogation and self -correction . . . . . -194 (2) Germany may then awaken to need of some form or degree of genuine self-government; home politics and colonisation could then be schools of large responsibility in politics gene- rally. As to an organic conception of the State, it is German thinkers who are the teachers of us all. And German municipal life largely already a true model. But changes from theory to practice, and from subordinate complexes to supreme one, are fundamental changes and especially difficult for German soul. Yet Englishmen and Frenchmen have changed profoundly in course of their respective histories. We are, perhaps, not asking for any greater changes in the Germans. 197 (3) Germans to recognise, instinctively and practi- cally, morality of State when acting outwards. Three difiiculties for us all in recognition of such morality in International politics. CONTENTS 27 PAGE (a) The apparent hypocrisy, because inevitable inconsistency, of every man or institution proclaiming a standard and ideal, as against those who proclaim none, or deny the possi- bility of such idealisms. Examples. (b) Some of the moral obligations, even of the individual, admittedly eJlow exceptions, sometimes difficult to fix. (c) The morality of the State cannot be just simply the morality of the individual. Nevertheless all these difficulties must be faced, and all should collaborate in developing the theory, above all the instinct and practice, of such a morality of States towards States. The need here greater than all the difficulties combined ...... 200 (4) Deepening of the Supernatural Life, its practice and vivid faith in it. Two difficulties here special in their degree to German soul: obsession of gigantic industrial competition and supremacy; and tendency to a purely Immanental Idealism. But three great hopes here, in three directions: The Churches, especially the Roman Catholic Church, of Germany; the Philosophy of Germany, now largely turning to a wise, critical Realism; the artisan classes, showing signs of wanting more than bread and material power . . 205 Conclusion : Germany to remain visionary still, but to acquire a vision more adequate to its noblest self, a vision not exclusive but inclusive — of all the com- plexes in her own borders, of the other nations and States, and above all, of the eternal, other-world life, the true moderator of the excesses of us all . 210 Index 213 THE GERMAN SOUL CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR: THE ** REALIST" AND THE TRUE SOLUTIONS OF THE PROBLEM We are all probably more or less conscious of a certain uneasiness, or vagueness, or inconsistency, of a strange aloofness in the thinkings and declarations special to religious souls, perhaps particularly to Christian indi- viduals and heads and organs of the Christian Churches, upon the outbreak of any great war which directly afFects us individual observers. It is, of course, plain that something of all this is attributable, in various degrees and ways, to particular compromises and com- mittals or to individual weaknesses or selfish- nesses, more or less inevitably operative within human individuals and in institutions worked and voiced by mortal men. Yet the indications are, surely, many and far-reaching that this in no wise exhausts, that it does not really account for, the phenomenon under consideration. Let us then attempt to pene- 29 30 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR trate this much into the problem of Christian- ity in face of war — ^let us strive to seize what may lie involved within the direct teachings and spirit of Jesus and within the fundamental nature and needs of man and of the State — within these two groups of facts and forces when brought acutely to face each other, within the unitary soul of any one Christian who is sufficiently awake and comprehensive in some degree to apprehend both groups in their profound idiosyncrasies. Even so, we shall not have developed or met the complete problem of Christianity and War. For already the attitude of Jesus Himself towards the State (inclusive of War) is but part of His general attitude towards the Family, Private Property, Labour, Trade, Law — to what these and other complexes and activities of man's earthly life possess of simply passing circumstances and condi- tions. And the State (inclusive of War) is, in its earthly circumstances and conditions, closely and variously related to those other complexes and activities in their own respec- tive earthlinesses. Nevertheless our self- limitation does still leave us the range within which we can reasonably hope to find the special strength and the special difficulty PLAN OF STUDY 31 (derived from its own original revelation) of Christianity in face of War. I propose to do this in three studies and stages. First, a concise enumeration or description of the leading sayings, temper and practice of Jesus and of the primitive Chris- tians in face of the State, Patriotism, War; and a short account of the spirit of Roman rule, and of our average West European present-day conception of these same things. Next, a vivid illustration of the problems involved in the attempt fruitfully to inter- relate these two sets of experiences, as fur- nished by the career and the teachings of Friedrich Naumann (born in i860, still very active in Berlin) and by two quite recent " War " articles by Professor Ernst Troeltsch, with a careful restatement of the antinomies thus brought out. And lastly, a quite short attempt to answer the problem with which this study began. I I The teachings of Jesus Himself and the practice of His early followers would require, for their full elucidation, a description of the 32 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR Israelitish and Jewish thought and life that preceded Him, and of the religious and political parties that more or less surrounded Him. But here we can only note the three main stages of Israelitish-Jewish beliefs as to war. First the ,stage, roughly before the great literary prophets, when Joshua, Saul, David " fight the Lord's battles " (Josh, iii. II; I Sam. xxv. 28; xxx. 26); when the wars are wars of extermination, as indeed were the wars of the surrounding heathen; and when Jahweh is conceived as Himself delighting in battle against the gods (the inferior, and evil, yet real gods) of the Gentiles. Next, the stage of the great prophets, where Jahweh is recognised, more and more plainly, as the God of all the earth and in His moral, spiritual nature; and where convictions and pictures of a time of universal peace and righteousness find magnificent articulation (Is. ii. 4; ix. 2-6; xi. 6-9; Hos. ii. 18, 19; Is. xi. 10, II; xxx. 27, 31). And there is the stage stretching from the Maccabees, 167 B.C. onwards through the Zealots, up till the destruction of Jerusalem in a.d. 69, 70, and till the final revolt under Bar Kochba in a.d. 132-135, during all which time the Apocalyptic writers prevail; a great war is believed to JEWISH POSITIONS AS TO WAR 33 lie in the future, waged by the Messiah at the end of this our world against super-earthly spirits, Satan and his angels — although the Messiah appears, at times, not as the great fighter but as the Judge (iv. Esra); and, more or less throughout, a patriotic and warlike enthusiasm can be traced in large sections of the people. And as to the rehgious and political parties in our Lord's own day, there were the Zealots, the acutely national and beUicose group, and the Essenes, who Hved a monastic, celibate life in a large community by the Dead Sea, and who overcame every warlike inclination — they forbade every trade related to war. The Baptist, the great precursor of Jesus, was very certainly no Essene, at least in this matter of war. For when John stood preach- ing and baptising and " the soldiers demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do ? he said unto them. Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely, and be content with your wages " (St. Luke iii. 14). John said this, and not " Leave the army without delay." His advice was doubtless identical with what an Isaiah or an Amos would have given. As to Jesus Himself, His attitude is more c 34 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR difficult to seize, and this (as I hope to end by showing) because of its rich profundity. The Sermon on the Mount culminates in such passages as " Whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also " ; and " Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you . . . that you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven, for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust " (St. Matt. v. 39; 44, 45). There is too the great instruction to James and John : " Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them : but so shall it not be among you. But whosoever desires to be great among you, shall be your minister, and whosoever of you desires to be the chiefest, shall be the servant of all. For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." — St. Mark x. 42-45. The Kingdom of God is not to come through visible wars. " If I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you " (St. Matt. xii. 28). And the passages breathing the keenest combat are certainly to be understood spiritually, as, e,g,y " Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, GENERAL ATTITUDE OF OUR LORD 35 but a sword " (St. Matt. x. 34) ; a sword of inevitable division of conviction even within the same family, and the sword of persecution on the part of the hostile, anti-Christian world. Hence the prompt rebuke to Peter: "Put up thy sword again into its scabbard; for all they that take the sword shall perish by the sword " (St. Matt. xxvi. 52). There is only one saying of our Lord's which can raise a doubt as to this, His fundamental abstraction away from the use of all physical force. St. Luke (xxii. 36, 38) tells us : " Then," after the Last Supper, " said he unto them," the Apostles : " But now," in contrast with the time of the peaceful, quite unarmed preaching-mission, " he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one." " And they said : Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough." Two things only are quite clear here. This order or advice or ironical comment refers back to His sending forth of the disciples, not indeed to that of the Twelve in St. Luke ix. 3, but to that of the seventy-two in St. Luke X. 4, which latter account is undoubtedly based upon the primitive document Q. And this saying, whatever it may mean, stands in the most marked contrast with all Jesus' 36 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR other sayings, and indeed with the known attitude of the primitive Christian com- munities, so that the text cannot be a reflec- tion back from such a later generation. This saying is thus most authentic, but, at the same time, so unique and so obscure ^hat common sense requires us to interpret, not all those other clear sayings by it, but it by them, or, at least to take this solitary passage as the expression of a passing unique situation and disposition. The least unsatisfactory solution seems to be that which connects these verses with the saying in St. Luke xii. 49-51, " I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled? I have a baptism to be baptised with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished," and with the prophecy there of the divisions that will arise within families. Thus our Lord has proceeded to Jerusalem with the conscious- ness that He will there have to enkindle a fiery conflict and calamity, in which He will fall; but, as to His disciples. He hopes that they will be able to cut their way out and escape, and He feels that they will be morally free to do so. But even this much He adverts to only for a moment; since, when they offer Him the two swords, and He says "It is JESUS AND JEWISH PARTIES 37 enough," He has already dropped that passing attention to this earthly contingency; and, in a sad ironical reference to the non-compre- hension by the disciples of the magnitude of the coming trouble, and to the obvious inadequacy of these physical defences, if physical force were really to be used. He breaks off the discussion by this short, ambiguous word. (So Johannes Weiss.) Jesus is, in any and every case, far beyond, high above, the first stage of the Israelitish Wars of extermination; indeed. He shows no touch of the warlike Messianism so frequent in the Apocalyptic literature. But if He thus very clearly does not belong to the movement of the Zealots (even though one of His apostles, Simon Zelotes, appears to have come to Him from those ranks), neither is His spirit and practice really that of the Essenes. For nowhere does He avoid meeting the secular world, even publicans and sinners, inclusive of women of evil lives ; nowhere does He call upon soldiers to abandon their calling as intrinsically unjust; a Roman centurion " came to Him," and Jesus indeed declares that He " has not found so great faith in Israel" (St. Matt. viii. 5, 10), but not a word does He utter to arouse this officer to the 38 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR intrinsic iniquity of his calling. Indeed in the words " Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's " (St. Matt. xxii. 21), it would be difficult to think of Him as deliberately including within these *' things " the Temple- tribute, the direct occasion and object of the question, and at the same time deliberately excluding military service, that army which, more than anything else, represented the " thing " of Caesar. But indeed Jesus Himself does not shrink from using force, and this deliberately, on a public, crucial, momentous occasion, one which, besides, determined His arrest and precipitated His death. Immediately after the solemn ride into Jerusalem " Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and the seats of them that sold doves " (St. Matt. xxi. 12); the Fourth Gospel adds the details that " He made a scourge of small cords," and with this " He drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen, and poured out the changers' money " (St. John ii. 15). And the solemn exclamation, still nearer to His death : " Jerusalem, CHARACTER OF JESUS'S TEACHING 39 Jerusalem . . . how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wing, and ye would not! " (St. Matt, xxiii. 37), appears indeed to be taken from some earlier prophetic writer, but may well have been appropriated by our Lord. Its tender love for the Jewish people, its patriotism in the deepest sense of the word, is evident. The fact is, doubtless, that the soul of Jesus is entirely free from all sheer individualism even simply as between man and man — ^He sees and loves the natural complexes and the rich, non-interchangeable variety of all the children of God; and yet that this same soul is immensely concentrated upon the profound reality of God, the reality of His kingdom, and the proximity of its coming. Hence, before these realities, those other facts and conditions appear to fade away; and, in His fullest intention, these natural complexes are seen and taught to require continuous purification, elevation, fructifying, by means of these great central realities. Hence we can readily trace the tender, humane, outgoing, constructive character of His teaching in the very names and schemes under which He continually presents His 40 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR message to us — ^the Father in heaven, the brethren upon earth, the Messianic banquet, the shepherd and his sheep; in the simple yet solemn acts of His public ministry, the constitution of the college of Twelve, the sending of them out in twos and twos, the appointment of one as their head; and perhaps above all in the qualities of the Kingdom as He announces it, social, varied, organic through and through. And, on the other hand, the instructions, parables and prophecies, which specially mark the Public Life from the great scene at Caesarea Philippi onwards, are predominantly concentrated upon the advent of the Kingdom — as future (St. Matt. viii. ii; xix. 28; xiii. 43); as imminent (St. Matt. xvi. 28; xxiv. 33; xxvi. 64); as sudden (St. Matt. xxiv. 27, 43); and as a pure gift of God (so also still in Rev. xxi. 2). And especially the immediacy gives here to all the simply earthly connec- tions and institutions a look of remoteness which very certainly in nowise springs from any gnostic instinct as to their intrinsic sinfulness, or from any anarchist desire for their abolition. Jesus does not reject, does not suspect, these things; for Him the flesh is not wicked but weak (St. Matt. xxvi. 41). APOSTOLIC ATTITUDE TO WAR 41 But the time is short, eternity is long, God is the great reality, before Him we are about to stand. Our Lord's heart and will are there. The ApostoHc times continue and illustrate (although only rarely in its full comprehensive- ness) this non-gnostic aloofness, this absorp- tion in God and in the specifically religious relations of men with God and (in and for Him) with each other, and this expectation of the proximity of the Second Coming. The Christian missionaries go forth, not into the way of the Gentiles but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel ; freely they have received, freely they give; when persecuted in one city, they flee to another; they do not provide themselves even with staves (St. Matt. x. 5~io); not one of them takes up arms. The first Christian community at Jerusalem is an entirely peaceful association (Acts i. 4); and in the war of Vespasian and Titus, when the final fate of the country and of the sacred city was at stake, this community flies to Pella, some fifty English miles away, beyond Jordan, and there peacefully awaits " the judgment of God," as Eusebius very quietly teUs us (HisL Eccles, iii. 5, 3). During the final terrible revolt and repression of 42 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR Bar Kochba, under Hadrian, the Christians suffer martyrdom for their pacific attitude. Thus, " My Kingdom is not of this world " (St. John xviii. 36) is, surely, what those early Christians felt with the noblest intensity. And this, although the Revelation of St. John contains not a little of the warlike Messianism and of a spirit of vindictiveness (Rev. vi. 2-8; 9, 10; xii. 7, 8; xiii. 10; xix. 11). On the other hand the beautiful, deeply important episode and story of Peter and the Centurion Cornelius (Acts x.) shows how entirely free were the peaceable majority of these first Christians from any repulsion to a soldier, or from any notion that his conversion to Christianity involves renunciation of the military life, thus carrying on entirely the spirit of the Baptist and of our Lord Himself. And the Revelation of St. John gives us per- haps the most moving expression extant of tender respect for the abiding variety of nations, as different and requiring each the supplementation of all the others, even in the life to come and before God, the source and overflowing pattern, the end and defence of all right richness : " After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could HOW CICERO DEFINES THE STATE 43 number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb . . . and cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb " (Rev. vii. 9, 10). We will be much shorter as regards the State and War and their conception by the great West-European thinkers and rulers. Some three or four definitions and descriptions must suffice. Cicero's definition of the State is interesting, not only as his but also because it is approved by St. Augustine, and we thus attain to a consentient Pagan and Christian witness of simply boundless influence. In his Dialogue De Republican then, Cicero makes Scipio Africanus the Younger define the Common- wealth {Respublica) as the weal of the people {res popult). But he decides that " the people " is not every assemblage of a multitude, but an assemblage conjoined by a common con- sent to right and a common share in utihty. And he concludes, from his various defini- tions, that the commonwealth, the weal 44 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR of the people, is truly extant when the State is well and justly administered, by a single King, or a few nobles, or the entire people. But where the King or the nobles or the people are unjust, there, in strictness, we find, not a vicious state but no state at all (St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei^ 11. xxi. 2, quoting Cicero's De Republican I. 25). The development, under the Roman Empire, of the conceptions as to the individual and the State, the intermediate corporations (the family, the clan, the guild, the religious association), and the kind and range of person- ality and responsibility to be admitted as real within this scale of realities or abstrac- tions, hardly favoured that Ciceronian defini- tion. True, if " no text of the Roman jurists has come down to us which directly calls the universitas (corporation) a persona^ still less does any call it a persona ficta,''^ Nevertheless, " Roman jurisprudence, starting with a strict severance of ius publicum from ius privatum^ found its highest development in * an abso- lutistic public law and an individualistic private law.' " Hence : " the theory of corporations which derives from this source may run (perhaps its straightest course) into princely absolutism, or it may take a turn THE MEDIAEVAL SYSTEM 45 towards mere collectivism (which in this context means individualism); but for the thought of the living group it can find no place; it is condemned to be * atomistic ' and * mechanical.' " — F. W. Maitland, in his Introduction to Otto von Gierke's Political Theories of the Middle Ages (191 3), pp. xviii, xxviii. As concerns the Middle Ages and their still living legacy, and their even more largely still operative contrasts, the following three convictions, each in closest relation to the other two, appear to be the chief: " The specifically mediaeval system of thought proceeded indeed from the Whole and from the Unity, but attributed to each narrower whole, down to the Individual, a special purpose and an inde- pendent value within the harmoniously articulated organism of the world-whole as filled by the spirit of God. Between the highest universaHty of the State and the indefectible unity of the Individual, there intervenes thus a series of mediating Units, each of which holds together and embraces the units narrower than itself." — Von Gierke, Jlthusius, ed. 191 3, pp. 226, 227. Aquinas and Dante are the greatest expoun- ders of this noble system; indeed the former makes discriminations concerning war which still remain very admirable. 46 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR The great canonist Sinibaldo Fieschi, who in A.t). 1243 became Pope Innocent IV., appears to be the first to use the phrase persona ficta : the corporation is thus a person, but a person by fiction, and only by fiction: it can commit neither crime nor delict. And the canonist Johannes Andreae (who died in a.d. 1348) bids the body politic fear no pains in another world. And plainly, the State cannot be considered an immortal metaphysical entity, entirely independent of the human souls which occasion and support it. Nevertheless the doctrine has never been proclaimed as an article of faith in the Roman Church; the belief in the reality of " national sins," " the national conscience " and the like, is strong and growing; and even in the law courts (at least of England and America) the intermediate corporations are increasingly being admonished, condemned, considered responsible, as though very real persons, which do not derive their authority simply from a Fiction, and by concession from the only real forces, the individual or the State. {See F. W. Maitland, op, cit, pp. xix, xl.) The Papacy has, as recently as 1885, in the Encyclical Immortale Dei of Leo XIII., given us an authoritative and helpful document THE PAPACY AND THE STATE 47 proclaiming the State and the Church to be two powers, each operating with its own right within its own sphere, each a society, perfect in its own kind and right, each a power springing from God Himself (Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, ed. 191 3, No. 5, 1866, 1868, 1869). And all this seems to require some kind of real personality. And above all, from first to last, the Roman Catholic Church, and very specially the Papacy, have been the faithful, massive witnesses and embodiments of the Givenness, the Transcendence, the Incarnation, the move- ment from Above downwards, from the One and the Few to the many, and back (for these many) through the Visible to the Invisible, which not only appears in the vocation by Jesus (in His humanity) of Twelve, and then through the Twelve of the multitude, and the Hke, but also, and still more fundamentally, in the central characteristics of the Kingdom of God: its descent from above, its givenness. The conception of war, indeed our judg- ments concerning it, evidently, always in reality, depend upon our ideas and estimates of the State. Probably Mr. Hilaire Belloc's definition is as good as any: 48 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR " When two independent communities conflict in will, if neither give way, there must be recourse to force. That is, each community must attempt to render life so unpleasing to the members of the other community that, rather than continue under such conditions, that other community will accept the enemy's will." — Land and Water, Aug. 22, 1914, p. i. II Let us now put Friedrich Naumann, his career and his teachings, in confrontadon with all the foregoing, and attempt thereby certain further discriminations. Friedrich Naumann was born in i860, the son of a Lutheran pastor, near Leipzig; his mother's father was a well-known Lutheran preacher. He studied at the strongly Lutheran Universities of Leipzig and Erlangen. Thus his early development was entirely under theological conservative influences. In 1883- 1890 he learnt, as a Lutheran cleric, in posts near Hamburg and in Saxony, to sympathise, at closest quarters, with the miseries and problems of the peasants' home-industries, FRIEDRICH NAUMANN'S CAREER 49 of the great factories, and of the coal-mines. He also learnt here to recognise Social Demo- cracy as a spiritual force, and henceforth combated less its economic demands than its hostile attitude towards Christianity. And he began to find the saving of individual souls and individual beneficence to be insufficient in face of the misery of the masses of our times; only social organisation and reform, and legal protection could suffice here. All this drew him away from the group of " the Interior Mission " (under Wickert) to the Evangelical-Social movement (at that time vigorously led by Stoecker). From 1890 to 1897 Naumann was a pastor of the Lutheran-Calvinist Union in Frankfort- on-the-Main, and in 1895 founded with his friends the periodical Hilfe^ which remains still the special expression of his work and views. Christian and Social had, now for many a day, stood quite unreconciled, side by side within his mind; but now Naumann found the substitute for a leading principle in the recognition of the existing State, as the pre- supposition and foundation of all social reform. From henceforth he proclaims, not a " Chris- tian," but a " practical patriotic " or a "national Socialism"; this newer Christian so CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR Socialist movement thus turns into the National Social movement. In 1897 Naumann abandoned his clerical office and settled in Berlin; his new party intervened in the elections to the Reichstag in 1898; and in 1907 Naumann was elected as member for the South German seat, Heilbronn. He has worked steadily, during the last well- nigh twenty years, for a union of all the parties of the Left, but this in fervent support of Bismarck's policy and temper, and indeed of the big armaments, the fleet and Weltpolitik of William II. All this, however, existed along with a persistently deep, even tender devotion to the poor and the outcast, and to the character, teaching and spirit of our Lord, as unique and inexhaustible. (See the careful article, " Naumann, Friedrich," in Die Reli- gion in Geschichte u. Gegenwart, 191 3.) Let us now see how Naumann reconciles, or at least practises and defends, both these certainly very disparate things. The following passages are all translated by me from the striking Briefe ilber Religion (5th ed., Berlin, 1910). NAUMANN: JESUS AND OUR AGE 51 First let us take extracts concerning the Christianity of the modern individual: " We see Jesus, in the international empire of the Romans, in the Uttle Jewish corner. Only there could he arise, only there did he arise. . . . What Jesus offers is adoption to be children of God in Galilee. ... I lay stress upon the words * in Galilee.' This adoption remains, indeed, in its deepest nature, one and the same, but it expresses itself differently in different environments. . . . We have, then, to transfer this adoption from GaHlee to other conditions." " There existed a time when I also was deter- mined to apply every word of Jesus to ourselves. Jesus says * From him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away ' (Matt. v. 42). Only those have a right to join as experts in the discussion of this saying who have actually attempted to follow it literally. Jesus says * When thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind ' (Luke XV. 13). Just you transfer this directly to our circumstances ! He says * Take no thought for the morrow,' ask not * What shall we eat ? or What shall we drink? ' (Matt. vi. 34, 31). But what does our political economy teach, and what do we instil into our children ? Jesus says * Sell that thou hast, and give it to the poor ' (Matt. xix. 21). But who is ready to sell, simply to transform his field or his factory into alms? Is it only the hardness of our 52 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR hearts and our innate sinfulness, if we do not carry out all these injunctions to the letter? Indeed, would it be a good fortune for any one, if we did so ? Are we even free, morally free, to will to do so ? " . . . " Once only there existed a primitive community, and even that did not flourish for long. The words of Jesus were originally intended to be taken literally; but, alas, they cannot by us be fulfilled to the letter." " We live in the age of Capitalism, and we possess a religion which was born before this age. . . . We all live in the midst of Mammonism, however little we may individually be servants of Mammon. Our age has become financial and speculative. And in this age we possess a Saviour who says, with incon- siderate decision, * Ye cannot serve God and Mam- mon ' (Matt. vi. 24). How can we escape the pricks of our own conscience? " — ^Pp. 58-60. " I and my friends wanted to utilise Jesus simply as the high and supreme advocate of modern in- dustrial and economic struggles. But every time that we seriously attempted to derive specific demands from his gospel, it failed us. For the Gospel was Galilean. . . . We are late-comers, who have to learn to understand him in his own time, in order that we may then, fortified by the fulness of his personality, make our way, free from any scruples of enslavement to the letter, within our own time." —Pp. 62, 63. " This our capitaHstic world, in which we live, because none other exists for us, is organised accord- NAUMANN: JESUS AND WAR 53 ing to the principle * Thou shalt covet thy neigh- bour's house! Thou shalt will to gain the market which the English hold, thou shalt get the influence in Constantinople which the French possessed, thou shalt produce in painting what hitherto appears to be the privilege of the Parisians, thou shalt eat the bread which, in strictness, the Russian peasant him- self should eat! And so on, endlessly: Thou shalt — covet! ' . . . All the moods of the Gospel only hover, like distant, white clouds of longing, above all the actual doings of our time." — P. 65. The remaining quotations deal with the teaching of Jesus and the modern State and its militarism: " In the days of Augustus, the Light of the World grew up in Nazareth ! Salvation in the stable, the pearl in the earth of the field, Jesus amongst the plebeians! . . . Nothing in the world exterminates so thoroughly the pursuit of the vanities of the aristocratic manner of life, as does devotion to the utterances of Jesus. He it is who, always anew, precipitates us from all our heights: What are you doing for the blind and lame? Are you living for them? What is weak in the eyes of the world, that God hath chosen in him. He it is who succeeds in infusing a strange longing into our heart and brain: be a brother to the small and obscure! — ^And yet only when one has come to know this spirit of boundless and active compassion in all its acuteness and one-sidedness, 54 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR does one also know, that only a few human beings can possess it in its entirety. It is impossible to attempt to erect the entire development of mankind upon compassion and fraternal dispositions." " This Gospel of the poor is one of the standards of our life, but not the only standard. Not our entire morality is rooted in the Gospel, but only a part of it, although an extremely important and easily despised con- stituent. Beside the Gospel there are demands of power and of right, without which human society cannot exist. — I myself, at least, do not know how to help myself in the conflict between Christianity and other tasks of life, save by the attempt to re- cognise the limits of Christianity. That is difficult, but it is better than the oppression of half-truths which I have had to bear." — Pp. 68, 69. " Primitive Christianity attached no value to the preservation of the State, Law, Organisation, Produc- tion. It simply does not reflect on the conditions of human society. This is in no sense a reproach, it is nothing but the determination of a limit: there exist human problems, of the greatest size and greatest difficulty, which are not essentially touched by the New Testament. By the occasional assur- ance of obedience towards the Roman Emperor, the question, as to how Christianity stands towards the State, is in no way solved. The State rests upon entirely different impulses and instincts from those which are cultivated by Jesus. The State requires rulers, the democratic State as well as the aristo- NAUMANN: JESUS AND THE STATE 55 cratic. The State grows up upon the will to make others subservient to oneself. All constructions which attempt to explain the State from brotherly- love to our neighbour are, considered historically, so much empty talk. The State can, when it per- fects itself, be impregnated with the motives of brotherly love, at least one can attempt it; but, according to its nature, the State is not love, but constraint. The State does not belong to the sphere where, if a man takes away my coat, I am to let him have my cloak also; nor to that where sins are forgiven, as soon as they are repented of. The State has no right to reckon with the end of the world, nor even with the voluntary goodness of all men. It forms part of the struggle for existence, a cuirass which grows out of the body of the tortoise, a set of teeth which a nation creates for itself, a compound of human wills, of soldiers, of paragraphs, and of prisons. This compound is, in all its harshness, the prerequisite of culture. And it found its pattern form in Rome, not in Nazareth." " How am I to say that Bismarck's preparations for the Schleswig- Holstein War were a service in the Kingdom of Jesus Christ? I cannot manage to do so. Yet all the same, I admire these preparations. It does not occur to me to lament them. Not every doing of one's duty is Christian. Bismarck did his duty, for his avocation was the cultivation of power. But such a duty and its fulfilment are not directly an imitation of Christ." — Pp. 71, 72. S6 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR " We thus stand small and poor before the pro- blem of problems; we possess a knowledge of the world, which teaches us a God of power and strength, who sends out death and life, as simultaneously as shadow and light, and a revelation, a faith as to salvation, which declares the same God to be Father. The following of the World-God produces the morality of the struggle for existence, and the service of the Father of Jesus Christ produces the morality of compassion. And yet, they are not two Gods, but one God. Somehow or other their arms inter- twine. Only, no mortal man can say, where and how this occurs. That is indeed a pain, but religion without pain does not exist, has never existed." — Pp. 74» 75. " A Christian who exclusively follows his Chris- tian theory is impossible within this our world. Go to the Pope, to the Lutheran chief Court Preacher, to the Monk, to the Professor; to the devout lady, to the devout man of business, the devout peasant, the devout beggar, the devout old woman: every- where you will find a natural substratum of self- preservative and struggling shrewdness conjoined with the spirit of devotedness and brotherly love. Everywhere Christianity is a part of life, nowhere life itself in its entirety. Christianity is like pure oxygen, which cannot be breathed by us in its full purity. ... In a word, I know that all of us, if we are to live at all, are forced to accept and to use, as the foundation of our existence, the conditions NAUMANN: THE STATE, FORCE 57 required by nature in the struggle for existence; and that only upon this foundation do we possess the capacity for realising the higher morality of the Gospel, in so far as this realisation is possible upon such a foundation." — ^Pp. ']'], 78. " Militarism is the foundation of all order in the State and of all prosperity in the society of Europe. Say all that you know against the military! It will all be correct, for the description of battles cannot be more awful than the reaHty. And then go with me to where miUtarism existed in the past, and where it now exists no longer — to the countries by the Mediterranean. The man who does not see what the collapse of the Roman military government in- volved is beyond cure. All the evils of military power are slight compared with the misery of a country in which no such rule exists. Dearth of soldiery means, in reality, ruins, decline, beggary, and war of all against all. And the smaller and the less developed are the armies, the greater is the con- stant danger of war. An armed peace is not beauti- ful, but it is better than all past conditions known to us through history. All our culture would go the way of the Arabian culture, were we to grow weak in a military sense. I believe this to be sheer fact; and if, after this, a man attempts, with whatsoever ethical exhortations, to persuade me away from this conviction, I simply combat his assumption of the right to twist the experience of all history according to his idea of good and evil. ... A State not built 58 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR up around a skeleton of militarism does not exist. Hence, we either dare to aim at being without a State, and thus throw ourselves deliberately into the arms of anarchy; or we decide to possess, along- side of our religious creed, a political creed as well." —Pp. 83, 84. " The more exclusively Jesus is preached, the less does he help to form States; and where Christianity attempted to come forward as a constructive force, that is to form States, to dominate civilisation, there it was furthest away from the Gospel of Jesus, Now this means, for our practical life, that we construct our house of the State, not with the cedars of Lebanon, but with the building stones from the Roman Capitol. But in this house Jesus is, still to-day, to proclaim his Gospel as he did in the past in the Roman house. Hence we do not consult Jesus, when we are con- cerned with things which belong to the domain of the construction of the State and of Political Economy. — ^This sounds hard and abrupt for every human being brought up a Christian, but appears to be sound Lutheranism. Luther, when he was placed before the very principles of the problem, especially in the conflict with Karlstadt and Miinzer, was of a quite unhesitating {riicksichtsloser) and splendid definiteness, and discriminated between spiritual and worldly matters with all the force of his mind and temperament." — Pp. 86, 87. NAUMANN TREBLY INFLUENCED 59 3 (I) Friedrich Naumann surely illustrates, with a stimulating vividness, the effect upon an unusually sincere mind, strong will, clean heart, and genuinely religious temper, of three influences and conceptions, which in his case have not reached their ultimate element of truth, their proper position, and correlation. I take these influences to be, roughly, Darwin- ism, New Testament criticism, and the (still strongly operative) character and teaching of our Lord, as these are handed down by the Christian Churches and are experienced by the religious soul. The Darwinism gives Naumann his philosophy, revealing to him the actual substratum of all human life, and especially of the State. The New Testament criticism furnishes him with such a conception of our Lord as seems to leave all that sub- stratum, and its more immediate expressions and superstructures, entirely untouched, and as capable of fullest acceptance, in this " Darwinian " sense, even by the most sincere believer in our Lord's direct attitude and teaching. But it is the third influence, the figure and the ethical and spiritual power and 6o CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR help of our Lord, as these are derived from Christian traditions and experiences, which make Naumann conscious how keenly such " Darwinism " is in conflict with, if not the undeniable conclusions of that criticism, at least with the force and fruitfulness of Jesus Christ as found by Naumann himself in life and through the Church. Thus Naumann is deeply wistful over his own divided unbridged soul — ^half Christian, half Pagan; half love, half violence. Each half attempts to remain or to become as " pure " as possible; but he himself is strained and torn asunder by these antagonistic forces thus continuously at full war within him. And Naumann is, very certainly, not an eccentric, still less a poseur in all this, but a deeply instructive example how a religious mind may come to find room, not only for the passive toleration, but for the active, deliberate, persistent encouragement of a frankly naturalistic statesmanship of the type propounded by MachiaveUi, and (as to the means) especially Bismarck. (2) But let us attempt to discover more pre- cisely why, where and how Naumann is wrong, and where lie the fuller truth and solid NAUMANN'S DARWINISM 6i safety in these deep, delicate, and supremely important and pressing problems. First, the influence upon Naumann of a certain, very elementary Darwinism is strongly apparent in the first half of his Letters on Religion, The Struggle for Existence; the Survival of the Fittest; Force and Fight as fundamental to all life ; the continuity of this life from plant to animal, from animal to man; the inexorableness of external condi- tions, and their strictly determining influence — all these elements are contained therein. Here, however, the Darwinism is, in part, unlike the gentle temper of Darwin himself, and resembles rather the hard, aggressively naturalistic English and German popularisers of some of Darwin's hypotheses; and even if we take it as here presented, it is curiously little prosecuted right down into its assump- tions and ambiguities. Thus it is plain, I think, that Naumann has never possessed, or has lost, all vivid sense of the profound difference between Evolution (or Epigenesis) as a descriptive account or working hypothesis, and Evolution (or Epi- genesis) as the ultimate cause, as the meta- physical nature, of the variation between the creatures spread out before us in the organic 62 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR world. Even if we could, with our bodily- eyes, behold an orchid-flower turn into a butterfly, or a gorilla change into a man, it would not follow that that butterfly was nothing more than the orchid as it appeared to us, and that man was nothing more than the gorilla. But either the orchid would, even then, have to be held somehow to possess, hidden within it, the germs of the qualities which the butterfly shows additional to, and different from, the qualities of the orchid (Evolution proper); or the orchid would have to be conceived as having, in the course of time, somehow taken into itself, from without, certain truly new elements and forces characteristic of the butterfly (Epi- genesis). In neither case could the onlooker reasonably reduce the butterfly to the orchid : the butterfly is noty " essentially " or " merely," an orchid, that we know; the rest is ingenious guess or probable history of the how, not sheer statement as to the what. And it is with the Whaty not with the How^ that the reason and conscience and conviction, the faith, life and death of man ultimately deal. For indeed this fundamental distinction holds much more in the case of the gorilla and the man. Not even the actual sight of OBSESSION OF " ORIGINS *' 63 the lowest of men springing from the highest of apes could reasonably make me hold the man to be " essentially " an ape, if careful analysis of the human mind, conscience, history, achievement, showed real, serious differences of kind between the two. The obsession of " origins," the supersti- tion that thus we can and do see into the very nature of things is most natural, and inevitably obstinate. For only such an actual sight, or imaginative marshalling, of the successive stages and results of development, is pictorial, and hence indisputably clear. And all men, in their average moments, are weary of the strenuous living and thinking of rich reality which holds them; and they turn to the clear abstractions which they themselves can hold, since they themselves have actually made them. Indeed the genetic method, which alone could give us a proces- sion seen in motion onwards and upwards into the external world where we men now stand, would be more what science seeks than what we are reduced to by our actual circum- stances, when we would securely probe real beings in their real life and growth — analyse the actual creatures that we are ourselves, and which we know much the best, since we 64 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR know these alone from within. And, if we work in accordance with this (our only safe and sober) way — the analytic method, we have to move inwards and backwards. And we then find man's marriage and family, his society, his warfare, law and state, to range from all but animal-seeming savagery to richer and richest spiritual contents and ends. Indeed, even in the highest civilisations there are, not only continual lapses from the better insight there actually attained, and patches of still more or less unconscious barbarism of conception, but there remains, of necessity, everywhere, amongst mankind here below, the psycho-physical and material substrate without which man, in this life at least, would not be man. And yet, go we thus back and back in the history of man, every- where we find traces of his specific humanity. Naumann's mistake lies especially, it would seem, in this, that there are (for him) ranges and levels and effects of man's activity which are, as a matter of fact, not human, since (in spite of Naumann's own definite nomen- clature but uncertain hopes) they are not really moral, nor even moralisable — ^neither subject to law nor permeable by justice, by STATE NEVER SHEER FORCE 65 altruism, by mercy at all. In reality, the very skin and flesh and bones of my hand or foot are not simply animal; they have been penetrated and modified, through and through, by the neural, psycho-physical, and (more and more subtly and centrally) by the imagina- tive, mental, volitional, emotional life of a being precisely human. The human State, it is true, appears to have for its most immedi- ate end the physical protection and well-being of its subjects, and to require (in varying ways and degrees it may be, but nevertheless per- manently) the outfit of constraining physical force. The State, again, may thus require, for all time, more of force even than of justice, and far more of justice than of mercy; just as, con- trariwise, the complexes of the Family, and still more that of the Church, will always, and increasingly, require more of mercy than of justice, and more of justice than of force. But the human State is, in reality, penetrated by humanity; it is based, if not upon brotherly love, yet neither upon force, but upon consent — the seeking and finding of some inchoate justice and interdependence, with force as its aid and sanction. The State can and does rise, sink — otherwise than a stone; it can be and is mixed, inconsistent— otherwise ee CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR than are the oxygen and the nitrogen in the air; it can and does have an end, a responsibility, a repentance, whilst alive in its connection with human beings. It is under- standable, judgeable, improveable, indeed tolerable, only when thus apprehended and operative in its true nature, not as a ruthless machine, a tornado, a fate, a physical law, a pack of wolves, a monkey horde, but as essentially human, springing from man, operat- ing through man, leading to man — man who is man only, everywhere, only as a creature of flesh and of spirit, of force and of justice, and even of love. Spinoza determined " to study the science of Politics with the same liberty of mind with which we are wont to investigate Mathe- matics; and to consider the human passions as properties which belong to human nature in the same manner as heat, cold, storm and the like pertain to the nature of the atmo- sphere." (Tract, Polit, ch. i. iv.) This is true only quite generally, but very false its special point; for we must indeed search out and follow the presuppositions and laws of human PoHtics at least as carefully as we do those of Natural Physics; but this very care will, if untrammelled by a violent determination THE STATE CAN REPENT 67 to attain to clearness and unity by the shortest cut and at any cost, lead us everywhere to discover and to respect the delicate, profound differences between the Organic, especially the Human, and the simply Physical. It is because of this profound difference between the State and a cloud, and between War and a thunderstorm, that (as we have seen) Rome could, already under Cicero, define the State, not in terms of force or utility alone, but of justice as well; and that, under the Antonines and Trajan, the State could approach, — ^and this even precisely as State, as Constitution, as Law, — the practice of much justice within the force, and not a little mercy within the justice. That England has been able, for many a day, to abandon, after a hundred years' war (full of brilliant victories and transfigured for the English imagination by the wizardry of Shakespeare), all claims to France, all pretence that that war was right and Joan of Arc, whom England burnt, was wrong; that the English State and Nation could so rapidly sink into frivolity under the Merry Monarch, after their heroic strenuousness under the grim Protector; that this same England could, now for many a day, deliberately regret her attempted coercion 68 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR of her American colonies, and make the greatest sacrifices in atonement for past injustice to Ireland — all this is fact, because the personal- istic unity of the English State is a fact. That France, during these last forty years, has thoroughly recovered from the Napoleonic fever-thirst for world-conquest, after suffering from it for well-nigh three generations; and that Germany, from about 1863 increasingly up to this moment, has, in its turn, become infected with a " Realistic " world-policy, which, surely, is not proving a permanent success — these cases again show us plainly that sheer force, mere self-regardingness for the State, is, in the long run, as subtly contrary to the wondrously inter-connected reality of life for the State as such " Realism " is for the Guild, the Shop, the Family, all which complexes, without any goodwill on the part of the general public and of other guilds, shops, families, have no range or material in which to practise even their unscrupulous cleverness. Ethical inconsistency is indeed more or less everywhere; even legitimate self-interest is difficult to define, and still more difficult not to overstep; yet the cynical rejection of all altruism anywhere is no better, objectively, than a senile childishness. THE STATE A MORAL COMPLEX 69 The State, indeed (a fact seen by Naumann, even to excess), is never simply the sum-total of the individuals, or of the families, guilds, communes that compose it. Certainly the family is not such a simple sum-total of its individual members. Just because none of these spontaneous human complexes are such sheer sum-totals of human individuals, are they so highly educative, so necessary, to the individual soul. Yet this their educational power over the individual man, shows also how none of these complexes are sheer non- moral forces. It is precisely because these complexes are (in a mysterious yet most real manner) personaHties endowed with a human, even if a sui generis human, spirit and an influence of their own, that they can and do repay those individuals who loyally will them, and who self-obliviously serve them, as being such humane or humanisable entities, by aiding these individuals to become more and more truly persons. And the individuals, thus benefited, in return benefit the State. And if the State be not accountable in the Beyond, the single soul is certainly thus accountable for its share in accepting, in awakening and increasing, or in numbing 70 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR and misdirecting, the influence and character of that personalistic complex, the State. And with the State — ^with the conception of its nature, personalistic or otherwise — the character and functions of War rise and sink, stand and fall. Naumann, finally, is deeply impressed by the conception of our Lord's outlook and teaching now prevalent in Biblical critical circles, which finds Him apocalyptic rather than prophetic, and absorbed in the coming of the Kingdom, and upon the detachments and heroisms needful during such a short, final crisis. Here, more certainly than with the Darwinian interpretation of Nature and of Man, Naumann is, we believe, upon the track of a very precious element of the full facts. But here again, as much as in the other case, does he fail, we think, to press the question home to its metaphysical foundations. We have already found that nothing that man is, does, or becomes, is just simply animal, still less simply determined. Hence, already thus quite generally, the teaching and temper of Jesus, as ethical and spiritual, do not stand in sheer contradiction to any- thing that man is, does or becomes — to the NAUMANN'S BIBLICAL CRITICISM 71 ineradicable implications and ideals opera- tive within these things. True, our Lord's injunction " Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them" (St. Matt. vii. 12) is but a preliminary demand in His teaching, a teaching which centres in the two great loves, the love of God and the love of man — a love even unto death and even of man's enemies (St. Matt. xxii. 37-40; V. 39, 44, 45). Yet that Golden Rule of natural morality is thus fully presupposed here, and that Rule will, inevitably, represent (upon the whole) the high-water mark of the ethical element in the ideal of the State. Nevertheless the human individual soul is certainly, in its depths and at its best, athirst and restless after something more than the Golden Rule; for assuredly, in the long run, mankind (if taken as holding no touch or apprehension of anything but its fellow-men) does not suffice unto itself. Certainly, actual humanity is not thus self-limited, either in its capacity or in its desire, as regards what is other but less than itself; the greatness of Darwin is proved precisely by this ability and longing to escape, from his own life, into that of a fly-trap plant or of an earth-worm. And as certainly, actual humanity in its 72 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR deepest souls, and in the deepest moments or capacities more or less of us all, is not content with the entire series of such less than human, or only human, existences and with such experiences of them. But the dissatis- faction of such souls and of such moments (if recognised in its persistence and in its profoundly noble fruitfulness) indicates the presence and the pressure, within our pro- foundest life, of a, of ihe^ Contrasting Other, of the Non-contingent Reality, of God. We cannot, indeed, in any true sense, get out of our own skins; but, within these our skins, He intimations and impHcations of more than just merely human, or sub-human, realities. And this instinct primarily wants God, not man; and, in man, it wants his union with God and his union with other men through God. Survival, yes; but a survival in order to attain fully to God and to His Kingdom — to these realities, nothing more, nothing less. Of such a hfe we can, here below, catch only glimpses, they irradiate us for an instant and they are gone; yet they it is that keep us going, individual, family. State ; we cannot, at our best, renounce, as though it were fanatical folly, what, for such instants, we can thus, sometimes, see, do and be. Such a life, JESUS AFFIRMS REALITIES 73 carried out in its spiritual substance to the full, would indeed be Jesus' Sermon on the Mount literally lived in its essential form: war, force, constraint, external law, even justice in so far as less than love — ^all this would have passed away. It cannot be thus carried out here below; it will, then, be carried out elsewhere. Metaphysics, Ontology, to this degree at least, are thus of the very essence of religion; religion is, primarily, a need, an experience and an affirmation of what is; and only in the second instance a command as to what ought to be. Because our Father jV, and because the blessed are and do His will in heaven : because of this (and not because the time is short or long before we have to leave this lower scene) are we to do this same Divine Will, as nearly as we can, here upon our earth. Thus it is that our Lord's temper and teaching precisely meet, after they themselves have more fully awakened and articulated, this metaphysical apprehension and thirst, this need of a perfect purity and self-immolating love — a need lying already present, in excess of his simply natural endowments, within the soul of man, since it is obscurely but really touched by God, the Supernatural Life. 74 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR Naumann himself has interesting admis- sions as to this permanent need of an objective, metaphysical, more than human source and end, in and for religion, and clearly realises the transitory attraction of all the purely subjectivist and merely intra-human currents. " In Religion we nowadays ask less what a man believes than how, — whether he is capable of strong and pure emotions. I do not hold this to be the last and the highest that can be attained in religion, but for our own selves now it is the highest." — P. 32. It will thus, I think, be more in his conceptions as to God and as to man, than in his affective attitude towards our Lord, that Naumann will require to modify his position. Ill It will be well, before concluding this study, to analyse Professor Ernst Troeltsch's two presentments of the problems here concerned, since they lead to striking hopeful elucida- tions, and this during the war itself. Naumann has now, towards the end of the first year of the world-war, reiterated, if TROELTSCH: GERMANS v, ALLIES 75 anything with a heightened emphasis, this, his " pure " doctrine, in a further book, on Central Europe, Professor Ernst Troeltsch, on the contrary, we shall presently study as a strenuous labourer for a truly ethical concep- tion of the State; yet even he reveals how great, for himself also, is the fascination of the "realistic" conception of the State, in an address delivered in Vienna last October, and published in the Neue Rundschau of Berlin, January 1916, pp. 50-75. Here the fascination is, I submit, especially impres- sive and instructive; every line of the paper breathes the most sincere desire to allow, not only as subjectively sincere but also as objectively not without some foundation, two differences, to be described presently, that exist between the Allies and the Central Empires, and yet no line here shows the least apprehension that a third difference — the repulsion manifested in England and France against the elimination of all ethical concep- tions and of all striving after moral obligations of any kind in statesmanship and war — may, after all, be sincere. He nowhere divines that this repulsion can be quite spontaneous — indeed that it lies deeper down, and is- more unchangeable, within us than are the two 76 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR other differences he so fully respects; and that it may be — may it not? — one of those struggling, largely inarticulate or stammering, but unconquerable, pressures and pushes of the fuller, ethical and spiritual life which is coming. Such pressures and pushes his own deep Christian soul has most largely taught us, his grateful learners, to discern in the other complexes of human existence, where the human soul is found struggling upwards to its own more adequate self - articulation. " There was no room for Him in the inn " is true, always, if in varying degrees, with respect to every deeper vital truth as it achieves its place in this rough world of the Market-place and the Barracks. (i) Professor Troeltsch, then, here finds that " policy, where it has for its basis the natural need of growth on the part of strong states (a need reinforced, in such cases, by the motives of the will to supremacy, of the requirement of glory, and of economic advantage), is a merciless game of force, to-day as it has ever been. And such is also the policy which has led to this War." " Especially since the world-war has become the Balkan war, the entire Idealism, which had been put upon the boards for the more European beginnings of HIS CHARGE OF HYPOCRISY 77 the conflict, has turned into an obstacle for the Allies, and has been laid aside by them." " The nimbus of Democracy and of Western culture " has gone or is going: " everywhere the Allies are themselves now manifesting a militarism, a policy of force and prestige^ a gagging of the press and a centralisation and irresponsibility of power, such as could not be greater in any autocracy." I will not stop to examine this charge of fact — of " hypocrisy " amongst the Allies — since I know Troeltsch to accept our principle — International Morality. I will only ask how Troeltsch, after such impatience with us for our non-admission of the full Naturalism of the State's international relations as a fact operative everywhere to-day, can, in good logic or (more important still) in self-con- sistency of instinct and impulse of soul, retain an intense faith in the possibility, and indeed the vital need, of an eventual mutual under- standing within the common conviction of the ethical character of the State. Most assuredly, and highly to his credit, Troeltsch (still now as always, and perhaps more than ever before) realises and nobly voices such a final Idealism — " a system of mutual respect and liberty of development constituted by the various 78 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR peoples in their several individualities, each alongside of the others ; a system which would, doubtless, involve the self-limitation of each to what was truly necessary to its existence as a State, and the granting by each to the others of the liberty of existence within these limits." Indeed Troeltsch will have it that it is this dual character, this inclusion of " the no doubt daring, and highly idealistic, concep- tion of an unforced mutual respect and a mutual granting of development " which constitutes the true specific nature of the German idea of liberty, in contrast with the French and English ideas of it, which, in their various ways, are, to his mind, of an essen- tially exclusive, and intolerantly missionary, type (pp. 74, 75). (2) Now the two points on which Troeltsch finds a real and objective and legitimate difference between the Western Allies and the Central Empires, and where he courageously presses his fellow-Germans to closer study and sympathy, and indeed (on the second point) to extensive changes and to consider- able acceptances of Western habits and arrangements, have, so it seems here, no connection with any affirmation or denial of g Naturalistic conception of the State, " Two HE ADMITS TWO DIVERGENCES 79 great contrasts to German culture are repre- sented by the Western powers and peoples. There is, first, the great aesthetic-artistic contrast. On the one side, there is the ancient and powerful opposition of France, the assimi- lator of the Latin Renaissance, to all North- German influence; and, on the other side, the high-pitched will and ambition of the political and economic forces constituting Protestant North Germany, a country as unartistic as you please. And the second great contrast essentially concerns political Ethics, and consists in the world-wide agita- tion carried on by the Western democratic ideas against Germany in the first place, but then also against its Allies — ^Austria, Hungary and Turkey, which, as the most autoritaire of the powers, have found them- selves at one with reactionary Germany" (p. 54). The main body of his Address then studies this question of political liberty, largely with an admirable penetration and instructive many-sidedness. (3) But it is, I submit, on two quite different questions that we, the Western Allies, especially I believe we here in England, feel the most deep-seated of impulsions and instincts of immemorial operation, questions which the 8o CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR more closely analytic and circumspect minds, at least amongst ourselves, cannot (precisely after the longest and best thought we have been able to give to the matter) place after those merely aesthetic and political differences. The first question, on which we feel thus with a primary intensity, is a question of sheer, indeed long extant, matter of fact. And the witnesses to this simply factual matter, who arise in my mind, are not philo- sophers and assuredly not sentimentalists, nor avowed philanthropists at all, but just two British officials — the one already full of years and honours, the other still ruling a vast multitude of coloured men. Lord Cromer was originally a military man, later on a brilliant Finance Minister for all British India, and then, in Egypt, probably the most successful organiser of the agriculture, finances and general prosperity of a land and of races neglected and oppressed by long centuries of misrule, that the world has ever seen under at all similar conditions. He has been great precisely in the most " realistic " of fields : even a Treitschke and a Bernhardi could, in what they retain of fruitful insight and intention, profitably sit as docile disciples at his feet. FIRST DIVERGENCE FELT BY US 8i Now what is it that instantly and per- manently strikes Lord Cromer as the most peculiar, and at bottom the most repulsive, feature in the confession and programme of a German statesman comparatively so sane, successful and serene as is Prince von Biilow in his book Imperial Germany ? Lord Cromer finds the work especially characteristic, "be- cause it may be confidently asserted that no ex-Minister, save one of North German nationality, could or would have published such a book. ... A French or English ex- Minister, similarly situated, however deeply imbued with the idea that foreign policy should be dictated by the interests of his own country, would not improbably have endeavoured to throw a more or less transparent veil of cosmopolitan sympathy over any extreme display of egotism. Prince Biilow " (with the sole exception of his references to Italy, where " we do, indeed, come across a faint trace of idealism") *'has done nothing of the kind." " He deprecates ' exaggerated expres- sions of friendship.' He is desirous to let all concerned know that Germany cannot ' be trampled on with impunity,' a fact of which the world has for a long time past been very fully aware. But the reader rises from a 82 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR perusal of these pages without any strong conviction that, should the necessity arise, Germany would not readily trample upon others. It is, at all events, abundantly clear that whenever any German interest is involved no moral obstacles will be allowed to stand in the way of furthering German views by the resources of a diplomacy which is not over- scrupulous, supported by prodigious force in the background." Germany " will not go out of her way to seek the amity of other nations. Oderint dum metuant is Prince Billow's watchword." (Reprinted from ^he Spectator, February 1914, in Lord Cromer's Political and Literary Essays, II., 1914, pp. 149-15 1.) And the younger man is now ruling a vast stretch of the Dark Continent, with admirable success. And this highly competent, remark- ably unemotional official once told me — not as anything at all special to himself — ^how when he went to rest at night, a full month's journey from home, living a life of hard pioneer's work, one of a handful of whites amongst a teeming coloured population in a climate profoundly trying to a European, and with an essentially modest pay ending in an equally modest pension: how then he would CRY OF * HYPOCRISY ' INADEQUATE 83 regularly ask himself a question. The question was : " What is it that renders this my authority and my labours here reasonable, right and endurable ? " And there was only one answer which ever satisfied him : " The decisive thing that thus sustains me, is a fact which I cannot doubt; the condition of the native population is (in all calculable respects) profoundly, astonishingly better than it was before England came, than it would be if England went." It was this, and not the very certain advantage for England also, that was the determining support to him out there. I submit, then, that it is waste of good breath, for our German critics, even for those we so gladly learn from in other, still deeper matters, to treat our squeamishness and our humanitarianism, when they appear at these levels and in such men, as a sheer hypocrisy which, in our inmost hearts, we know to be merely such, and which therefore must, in the still hours of the night, leave us impressed with the sublime veracity of German " Real- Politik." I take it that even Machiavellian- ism, on its wiser side, persistently allows for even the most demonstrable of prejudices, provided only they be inveterate. Indeed all 84 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR these " Realisms " recognise and utilise the passions — do they not ? — the passions as they are, not as they ought to be. Thus if " Fright- fulness " does not frighten, but only stiffens our resolve to hold out till final victory at any cost, such an " hypocrisy " clamours aloud for practical recognition, as a fact, quite especially by those " Realists." My second point concerns the logical, and still more the psychical, tenability of any postponement of the ethico-political question. The method in Ethics that is involved by any such postponement vividly recalls, to my mind, the theory of knowledge in the Cartesian philosophy. Descartes starts with a subject only; cogito ergo sum — I think, not this or that, but I just think : and then Descartes ends somehow with an object as well. Yet our experience (which is our only satisfactory starting point) always gives us subject and object, the two together or neither of them. Only if experience be thus taken as it is in itself, do the elementary, simple-seeming, as yet confused and mostly inarticulate, impressions of the child, the peasant, or the savage reveal, when pressed, analysed and interrogated with delicate docility, the fountain and channels, the form OUR SECOND DIVERGENCE 85 and laws, of our larger and largest, of our richest and most particularised experiences — our actual contacts with the various realities amidst which we live and move. Nothing, in those earlier stages of it, could well be more dim, dreamlike, " sentimental," if you will, than this experience of knowledge; yet nothing is more doctrinaire and disastrous than to start with one half of that dim experience, and then expect to find, at the end of our investigation and conviction, the whole of experience, as it now faces us distinct in our fully-expanded life. Now in Ethics, whether individual or social, we have to be alert to a closely similar difficulty, pitfall and need. As Descartes starts with the Subject bereft of any Object to stimulate that Subject to thinking, not of Thought but of that Object, and thus leads us into a bHnd-alley in which most of the Epistemologists, from his day downwards, have been vainly groping about for a satis- factory escape out to the Object, and to the frank proclamation of the universal trinity in unity of all knowledge (the knower, the known, and the knowing); so also with all solipsistic Ethics, whether of the human individual or the human complexes. Go as 86 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR far back in man's history as you can, his knowledge is thus treble and his conduct also. Mere self-knowers and mere self-seekers, whether they be individuals, families, clans, trades, classes, churches, nations, states — these things are non-existent ; and the strictly consistent dreamers of such things are not to be found even in chanceries and in camps, but only in lunatic asylums. Everywhere Conduct, as Knowledge, is triune^ a two-fold action — ^the action of myself upon the other and the action of the other upon myself — and the activity that thus links these two realities. And the action of the one can never, in the long run, be an action of sheer hatred and hostility against the other; for such action would again be mere maniacal solipsism. How much of this very doctrine, in its latest, fullest articulation, we all most grate- fully owe to Germans, especially to Professor Troeltsch himself! I am only urging here that you cannot end as he certainly does, if you begin as he here seems to do — that you cannot be both fully, definitely Machiavellian in politics and deeply, tenderly Christian in the life of the individual, the family and the church. TROELTSCH ON NATURE OF STATE 87 Troeltsch's " Personal Morality and State Morality " {J^leue Rundschau^ February 1916) meets and satisfies many of the misgivings likely to remain in the mind of an English reader of " The German Idea of Freedom." True, even in this later, deeper article we have (if we would be fair to, and learn from, its standards) first to get away from what we Allies will be unable to feel as other than strange misapprehensions concerning large facts of the War. Thus the wickedness of the attempt to starve out an entire people is dwelt on — ^although blockade is recognised as legitimate by International Law, and though Germany, had she but possessed the power, would have been the first to intro- duce it against us with incomparably greater stringency. And again we are assured that the German authorities, military and political, " have throughout preserved justice and fairness in a quite exemplary way." Indeed, also the frequent insistence upon the gigantic " hypocrisy " of the Allies, their temper and programme in general, will not, I beheve, be accepted by the historian of the future, anxious, surely, to discover here also the 88 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR kernel of truth lurking in so admittedly large a husk of obstinate and successful profession of revolt felt by these AUies against the official temper of Prussianised Germany. Nevertheless, we can and ought quickly to reach, in this striking Paper, page upon page of all but pure instructiveness. I will give here the main passages; I will then press certain of Troeltsch's conceptions or implications as really hostile to his own deepest convictions; and I will end upon the most ultimate points where we are in whole-hearted agreement. (i) Troeltsch, then, first undertakes to show how real for us all is the problem before us; how, on either side in this world-war, there is an inner conflict between different modes of ethical valuation, " between Peace ethics and War ethics; Humanitarianism and National Egoism; Christian Love and the Fight for Existence; Democratic Equity and the Aristocratic aim at the Highest; an ethics of self-limitation and an ethics of unbounded will and exaltation of the self." The second mode of valuation Troeltsch finds " amongst the Allies just as it exists amongst the Germans, e,g, in Homer Lea's Day of the Anglo-Saxony Cramb's England and Germany, and the sacro egoismo of the Italians." Most ENGLISH PREACHERS OF FORCE 89 assuredly Troeltsch is right so far; the idolatry of sheer force and of a boundless expansion, self-justified by their sheer existence, is to be found in every country; nor is it more true if urged by Carlyle and Cramb than if canonised by Treitschke or Bernhardi. " But among the Allies," continues Troeltsch, " this mode of valuation is confined to some leading publicists and influential groups, whose opinions are deliberately kept in the background; for the masses, the Humani- tarian-Democratic-Civilisation Gospel is put in the forefront, whilst the Germans are denounced as standing exclusively for National Egoism. ... In Germany people are more honest; and besides that, we are less politically trained, and undervalue the psychological-ethical elements in the con- trasts between the nations as these accentuate themselves; and, again, a certain bent to doctrinarianism in the German character leads them to think out and to emphasise contradictory theories even in the hour of greatest peril " (p. 147). We shall find, I think, that this " greater honesty " is a far more complicated thing than here appears; but it is a gain to have the clear admission of two other, very certain, defects. 90 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR Then Troeltsch proceeds, rightly I believe, to refuse to be content with the distinction between a war of self-defence, as always right, and a war of " aggression," as always wrong; since, e,g, in this war, whoever it was that began the war, even " aggressively," the war is no more, for either side, one for a simple maintenance of the conditions extant when the war broke out (p. 148). The problem then is profoundly real. Troeltsch finds the solution of the problem in the distinction between Private MoraHty and State Morality, which Germans inherit from their great philosophical and historical teachers. " This distinction maintains the validity of the Ethical for both domains; but allows to this Ethical, in each domain, because of its particular practical conditions, a sense so different as, in certain circumstances, to issue in an apparent contradiction, a contra- diction which, nevertheless (if confronted with the final depths of the ethical conception operative here throughout), is found to be indeed only apparent " (p. 149). Thus Kant starts with the ethics of the individual, who is bound to respect the freedom and the rights of other individuals. An analogous ethical relation could, he held, prevail between states KANT AND FICHTE ON STATE 91 only in a Utopia, in which all the states were subject to some supreme authority which could actively check any mutual aggression. " Yet he characterises such a conception as the final ideal of reason and of its develop- ment, an ideal to which men should approxi- mate as much as possible " (pp. 149, 150). Fichte added to Kant's teaching a new con- ception of the State as such, the State with an individual existence of its own. " We thus have the series : Individual, State, Mankind " (pp. 150, 151). I reserve a point of my own as to Fichte, and Troeltsch's account of Hegel and of Ranke for my own objections further on. But Troeltsch's general retrospective conclusion I give at once. " If the historians of the age of Bismarck (and Bismarck himself) emphasised State -Egoism they only meant to insist upon the difference between Private Morality and State Morality; they did not mean that states, in their relations to each other, were not subject to any moral law." So especially with Treitschke (pp. 152, 153). Wistful little reservations which play around the references to the " morality " of Bis- marck's statesmanship indicate, also here in Troeltsch, how impossible in practice is the maintenance of international obligations of 92 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR any articulable kind, with an unqualified acceptance of all Bismarck's actions and spirit in these matters. We could as well defend the strict " morality " of Cromwell's action in Ireland. Pressing the problem still closer, Troeltsch finds that Private and State Morality cannot be the same, because there exists no superior power to protect the single state, as there exists to defend the single man ; because states, unlike individuals, are complex multi- tudes with indistinct outlines, rendering it difficult to fix responsibility for action; because the consequences of action have, for the State, to be thought out in vast ranges of space and time; and, above all, because the moral relation between the individual and the super- individual unity is not alongside of the moral relations between individuals, but itself pro- vides the sphere and presupposition for these individual relations (pp. 158, 159). It is precisely this last point of difference •within interdependence which is used by Troeltsch, with delicate penetration, directly to introduce the affirmation of the moral character of the State, also in its inter-State relations. The principle of States is not " collective egoism," but faith in the value STATE MORALITY, ITS NATURE 93 of the special culture they each embody, and duty towards the present and future genera- tions of their members. " The mere tendency to expand, collective egoism, would not be morally nobler in the nation than egoism in the individual " (p. 159). Inter-State morality " requires not only fidelity and trust, con- sistency and clearness, the greatest possible measure of honesty and frankness, mutual respect and recognition," but it requires also each State to take its place in the system of the great Powers of European culture, in which the small Powers have their assured place also — " a system full of common spiri- tual values and of moral unanimities " (pp. 160, 161). Again the difference between the two moralities is diminished by the fact that, even for Private Morahty, the duty of self-sacrifice is an exception, whilst the duty of the mode- rate assertion of our own rights, as limited by the rights of others, is our ordinary task; and by the corresponding fact that, also for the State, there can be occasional self-sacrifice and there always ought to be self-limitation. A State may be called to self-sacrifice, not indeed for other States, but for ideals, e,g, free- dom; as Fichte exhorted the German people 94 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR to sacrifice itself rather than to exist enslaved. The usual morality of the State, its self- limitation, " implies the demand for such a position among the world powers as corre- sponds with its own real contents and real needs; honest recognition of the vital needs of the other single states ; and regard for the vital interests of the system of European Culture as a whole" (pp. 159, 160). This treble recognition of these three kinds of real political complexes and of their real inter- relations is, maintains Troeltsch, the true meaning of Real-folitik, And Troeltsch concludes all with the practical application of these principles in pages almost entirely of deepest helpfulness for us all. First, generally : Statesmen indeed will have to deter- mine the details, " but the people must bear in mind the principle that the safeguarding of our own dignity and of room for our future development must coincide with consideration for the possibilities of free States, existing alongside of each other within one single great cultural system" (p. 162). And next, in particular, with regard to each of the six great groups or currents of German, indeed of European, contemporary life, the Imperial- ists, Liberals, Democrats, pure Socialists, CRITICISM OF VARIOUS GROUPS 95 Conservatives and Christians. A few words must suffice here from the criticisms of the first, third and fifth group. Imperialism (Troeltsch carefully distin- guishes the excessive kind he condemns from the rightful drawing together of the various parts of one and the same State) " thinks in terms of biology, or of old German pagan heroism, or of Roman ambition and dominion " — this, so far, applies to Naumann; " or even in the style of Assyrian deportations " — a neat thrust at Professor Eduard Meyer. " If the egoism of the State is really * essenti- ally unlimited,' then all morality, Kantian or Christian, falls to the ground." Some of these writers indeed speak of " both extensive and intensive " unlimited development ; " but these are quite different things — the first being the principle of War, which in itself can consider no one; the second, a principle of culture, which has a meaning only where the State forms part of an enriching, interactive System of cultured States " (p. 163). And, however inconsistently, these writers repre- sent a current of thought " which is beginning to prevail all the world over. But the danger is not the less plain for that — the danger both in foreign and in home relations, both 96 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR in our own case and in that of others" (p. 163). Democracy is to-day divided. The old pubis citarian^ Swiss, Pacificist type has been driven from the field by the coalescence of the will of the masses with expansive Imperial- ism. " But the democratic Imperialism of the Entente Powers continues to give lip-homage to the old anti-Imperial democratic ethics." Hence, according to Troeltsch, the boundless hypocrisy on their side. We shall presently find, I think, an equally great " hypocrisy " — ^surely, inconsistency — of a subtler kind in the Prussianised German mentality. And as to the Conservatives, at least in Germany, there is for them no ethical problem at all: it is a simple matter of a class code, loyalty to the Crown, the command of religion. *' These men require continual reminders of how difficult it is to reconcile e,g, such Imperial- ism as that to which Count Reventlow inclines with the Christianity to which they attach such high value; and how, with such a concep- tion of power," as it is also preached by General Bernhardi, " the problem of political ethics begins indeed, but does not end " (p. 166). (2) The positions thus attained by Troeltsch OBJECTIONS: SUPER-GERMANISM 97 are so costly and, to my mind, so substantially true, that I feel it almost a meanness here to trace out four counter-currents which, although mostly held in careful check here, are (one or the other or all) strongly at work amongst many, perhaps amongst most, Germans, even where these hold views otherwise similar to those here championed — currents which then leave the final outcome of this mentality more incorrigibly blind and oppressive towards non- Germans than even a frankly materialist Imperialism would leave it. The first counter-current is strongly exem- plified by Fichte's Reden an die deutsche Nation (1808), extracts from which will be found in my second study. Troeltsch is glad that these addresses are, at last, being really read, since they inculcate the conception of the State as " the incorporation of a special ideal which could not be destroyed without loss to the Universe." Yes: but these ad- dresses (most closely studied throughout by myself quite recently) couple this major premise of worth and of standard straightway with a minor premise of fact and of existence, viz. that the German people is the people ; that the Germans stand, to all the West Euro- pean peoples and civilisations of non-Teutonic 98 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR speech, as does the true, the genuine and the intrinsically precious to the false, the insincere and only contingently useful — useful, when these non-German peoples furnish materials and occasions for their elaboration by the German people. Thus did the Lion prepare a feast for all the beasts of the field, even the field-mice and the moles had their seat and share assigned, each strictly according to its intrinsic merits. But then at the feast the Lion took, in most careful attention to this culturally graduated scheme, his " true," i.e. the Lion's, share. Let us not retaliate here with the cheap cry of " hypocrisy " ; enough, if we insist that Fichte's major pre- mise, if used with such a minor premise as would be supplied by the rich outlooks of a Leibniz, Goethe or Troeltsch himself, will greatly aid us all towards international equity; but that, if Fichte's major premise be used with such a minor premise as he so spontane- ously furnishes, we are further off than ever from our goal. The second counter-influence is fully adopted by Troeltsch himself. He tells us how Ranke definitely set the concrete conception of the European Fellowship of Nations in the place of the general idea of Humanity and of Reason EXCLUSIVE EUROPEANISM 99 and exclaims : " this Occidental community of nations alone is our Reason, it alone forms a real historical complex of life possessing actual significance for us " (p. 152). Hence the gravity of the charge that the Allies " break the solidarity of Western culture by stirring up strange races against us " (p. 161). It is probably not unfair to remember here that if the Emperor William II. really adjured the Germans to rival the fright fulness of the Huns, he did so in addressing the troops about to depart for China after the Boxer troubles there. A Scottish officer friend of mine, a man of niost careful speech and great experience, described to me what he himself saw, as a member of the British contingent in that international army under Field-Marshal von Waldersee, soon after that address, out- side of Pekin. He saw quite harmless women and children of the Chinese poor, who were looking on at the drill of a squad of German soldiers, deliberately shot down in obedience to the deliberate order of the commanding ofiicer, a friend of my friend. And this ofiicer, the act accomplished, very quietly defended his action to my friend, as truly wise and alone kind: did not his inter- locutor know that thus to strike terror into 100 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR the civilian population meant inducing them to bring pressure to bear upon their govern- ment, for the prevention or ending of war — ^war which essentially means the suspen- sion of all restraints ? Indeed the well-known general harshness of the Prussianised German to native races, markedly beyond that now in vogue certainly on the part of England, assuredly springs from, or is defended and fixed by, or again is itself the part-cause of, such a cast-iron demarcation between Euro- pean races and governments (to whom we owe serious consideration) and all non-Euro- pean races and governments (which, as such, and from our own races and governments, are completely and finally to count for nothing). True, the American proclamation of the natural full equality of all men, and even the emancipation of the negro there, have not prevented racial exclusiveness from attaining, in those lands, probably the maximum of intensity known to history. Yet the German who, at the top of his scale of racial values, finds, with Fichte, but one super-nation (his own), and, with Ranke, keeps four-fifths of the human race altogether outside of even the bottom of this scale, will, by this latter addi- tion, have admitted an influence to work in POWER AND WORTH iDENTlFIED loi his mind that cannot fail to harden him all round. Why not, here again, be less definite and final ? Why should the Hindoos and the Japanese simply not exist, as possible or actual states, for my European State consciousness ? And indeed are the Turks, the much-prized allies of Germany, really constituents of the European cultural system? Yet the Turks actually hold and barbarise a large part of Europe, whilst no Hindoo or Japanese (assuredly not barbarous peoples) covets a single square foot of European territory. Graduated attention and regard, ranging from closest friendship to almost indifference — ^are they not essential to ripe wisdom ? The third counter-influence does not seem to have been noted, even by Troeltsch himself, as dangerously, because subtly, hostile to his ethical convictions. Thus in the descrip- tion of Ranke's position we read : " the con- flicts between the great State-individualities are considered here, in substance, as expres- sions of their expanding will to live, but are held, nevertheless, to gain " for the individuali- ties thus engaged " the position of power corresponding to their interior significance." This view is thought by Troeltsch to correspond also with Fichte's conception of humanity 102 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR and its conflicts; but Troeltsch appends no criticism (p. 152). Thus "die Weltgeschicht' ist das Weltgericht " ; thus the flux or fixation of physically palpable facts is found to be the strict expression of perennial values — of " all the world's coarse thumb and finger failed to plumb." History ceases to be tentative, approximate, to begin and end in mystery and hope and humble trust, and becomes fully pragmatic, final, the unroUing of a series of definite tests as to the intrinsic spiritual worth of peoples and of states — so, presented in its richest and finest form, in the case of Ranke's histories. Yet, press this position — it refuses to satisfy precisely the moral and spiritual sense which so largely gave rise to it. What ? The Assyrian and Babylonian States were not only more populous, stronger materially or physically, more martial than the Jews, but they were richer in cultural and spiritual worth than the latter ? And we know this, as a demonstrable fact, because these lords of Nineveh and Babylon successfully deported the subjects of Jerusalem and Samaria ? So too Rome, by its sack of Corinth and suppres- sion of Hellenic nationality, did not merely show herself martially and politically stronger than Greece; but the estimate is erroneous YET POWER AND WORTH DISTINCT 103 that " Greece the captive led captive Rome her conqueror," and the simple fact that Rome, as a State and an army, could (for she did) conquer and incorporate the Greek State and army decides that Rome possessed the richer cultured content: Rome, as a State and army, survived in precisely the degree to which, as a civilisation and a spiritual force, Rome deserved to do! I take the error here to spring from a coalescence of the German intense longing for, and impressedness, by power — even by power of the physical kind — and the equally German desire to trace, beyond the possibility of cavil, the operation of spirit. The resulting confusion lies in precisely the clear and dramatic portion of the position — in the attempt, not to trace the workings of the aesthetic, ethical, spiritual needs, experiences, discoveries and productions of man throughout the specific history of each faculty, but to trace them in a close identification, or at least paralleHsm, with the rise and fall of military and political power. Those deeper and deepest, largely elusive, forces are never identical with, indeed they are normally in a certain condi- tion of tension against, these latter, the more superficial, readily noticeable powers; and if between the two there is some real connec- 104 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR tion, it is not close nor constant. Thus the zenith of the Jewish, the Greek, the Roman State did coincide with the fullest blossoming of the Jewish, Hellenic and Roman spirit and literatures. Yet France's Hundred Years' War with England left her largely and for long a desert; the German Thirty Years' War led to a terrible lapse back into savagery of the population generally; the Napoleonic vic- tories issued from a vulgar court and the counter-victories of the Allies were succeeded by some thirty years of general European moral and spiritual laxity and decline. Here, then, is a point where a certain subtle material- ism urgently requires the most careful exor- cising. And the fourth current pushes home this identification and strict parallelism between spiritual worth and visible power unflinch- ingly into the Absolute. Hegel, Troeltsch tells us, " looked upon humanity as the rise and decline of the great State-complexes in which the World-Spirit reveals Itself, succes- sively or simultaneously" (p. 151). Thus the rise of the Holy Roman Empire and of Louis XIV. of France (in so far as they became large visible facts). King Frederick II. of Prussia's brilliant unscrupulous victories against the STATES EXPRESS DIVINE LIFE 105 Empress Maria Theresa, and the German Empire of 1870 (in so far as it has imposed itself now for fifty years upon friend and foe) are even more than so many demonstrations of cultural and spiritual human superiority; they are direct episodes in the self-mani- festation and growth of the Divine Life Itself! We shall return to this point in the second study. Here I would only observe how once more the German has gone too quick, too fast and too far. As Luther could not live without absolute certainty that he was already saved, and found all " working out your salvation with fear and trembling," all moderate trust in sacraments and strivings and ever renewed repentances, with abandonment to God's mercy as complement of all these moral approximations, to be but snares and satanic substitutes for that quite simple absolute certainty, so here. A real, though varyingly close and nowhere completely traceable, rela- tion between the Divine and the Human is not found enough; the very God must Himself fully express Himself in the succession of apparently Human acts, not of the human individual but of the human State. (3) As always with Troeltsch we find him, in this Paper also, at his very best where the io6 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR subject is deepest — in his religious conviction and outlook. " Christianity " in our day " has retired," he tells us, " to the depths of the inner life, and at the same time risen to a height that transcends State and War and Culture — the union of souls in a sphere above this earth, the sphere of the Highest and the Ultimate. From thence Christianity still overcomes the world; but it has, in the first instance, to allow the world to subsist and ' work itself out ' ; it leaves room for a Private Morality, far below the sublimity of its own highest laws; for a State Morality, which lies far outside its horizon; and for a Morality of the Fellowship of Nations, which is bound up with the cultural values belonging to the sphere of this earth." Thus, the crisis of Christianity also has led to State Morality coming to the front; and even if there are bridges between this Morality and a " King- dom of God," we must recognise the great gulf between them. " It may well be that the frightful widening of the gulf, which we witness to-day, will intensify the religious yearning later on, just as the old Roman Civil and World Wars did in their time." But mean- while " the significance of the State, for the present and the immediate future, rises upon TROELTSCH'S FINAL VIEWS, TRUE 107 us in an almost staggering way. . . . Yet let us remember that State Morality is not the only Morality, that it rests upon the broad ground of the moral consciousness generally. Only a Private Morality of increased and purified power, together with a fundamental recognition of the cultural values common to our group of nations, will give the State the right to think so highly of itself, and the power to assert itself as a moral good raised above all brute force and national vanity." " This synthesis must be maintained in the new State Morality " for the fundamental reason that " the essence of all genuine State Morality is to be found implicit within it " (p. 169). In this deep faith and large hope we can assuredly all gratefully join. IV It is time to conclude this study, first by certain practical recommendations, and then by an attempt to give a clear answer to the clear question with which the entire enterprise began. I The rules for our action appear to be three — the third requiring the longer explanation. io8 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR (1) We will encourage, practise, articulate, within ourselves and in others, the sense that man and this earthly life of his, do not, as a simple matter of fact, suffice to man, at his noblest and his best. Thus the deepest, noblest devotednesses of the battlefield wiU appear in no sense as sentimentalities or superfluities, but as specimens and fragments of what we are secretly invited to become, of what already is the Hfe Hved by the saints in God. We thus gain a levelling-up, a standing-on- tiptoe, a yearning to kiss the feet of the Crucified. (2) We will encourage, practise, articulate, within ourselves and in others, the sense that, though this full supernatural life cannot be per- ceived, still less Hved, except as a gift, in rare moments where at all fully, in modest frag- ments where at all continuously, here on earth : yet that any or all, or ever so slight an hunger after or approach to it, constitute the true salt of our lives already here below. And this, not only as regards man's individual or family life; no, but, in their various degrees, as regards his guild or trade, his society and country, and his State as well. Such approxi- mations will all, of necessity, be more or less compromises, mixtures, inconsistencies; they THREE PRACTICAL RULES 109 will not, because of this, be, of necessity, hypo- crisies or foolishnesses. Mediaeval Chivalry and the Truce of God, the Geneva and the Hague Conventions — they were, and are, not nothing, they are much; for thus we refuse, in our public action also and legal agreements, to leave even War itself outside of, and beneath, the pale of the human — as a condition in which anything and every- thing is permissible. If not the Sermon on the Mount at its culmination, then at least its presupposition, the Golden Rule, or some approach to this Rule, appears thus recog- nised as binding, even in War; and the divine gentleness of Jesus can put out timid blossoms even there, in various approaches to the ideal of " a very perfect gentle Knight " such as Chaucer strove to picture. (3) And we will apprehend, penetrate, en- dorse, more fully and courageously than ever, the fact and nature, the need, the dangers and the duties, of a Church, of Churches, of the Church; and of the double, irreplaceable r61e the Church has and ought to play in the perpetuation and application of the teaching and spirit of Jesus in face of War. We have found that man cannot fail to indicate some traces or implications of his no CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR humanity, of justice as well as of force, of love as well as of justice, in all even that he singly is, does, or touches; yet also that he requires to find, or to constitute, certain social complexes for the more complete fulfilment of his various larger needs and aims. And these complexes will, like unto the individual's different acts and levels, necessarily vary, each from the other, in the amount and kind of their physical, forceful substratum and self- seeking, and in the amount and kind of liberty, capacity and duty possessed by each, for the prosecution of justice and of love. And thus man requires also a specifically religious social complex — ^all the more in proportion as religion attains to the fuller consciousness of its own nature as a Givenness, a Transcend- ence in Immanence, an Incarnation, a witness to the full Life there, with glimpses and suggestions of it here. The State will continue to have an overflowing task in the furnishing of the preconditions, the earlier stages, and the external liberty for such a witness and such complexes; but evidently the State itself is not, and cannot become, a complex directly, specially busy with these later stages and gifts of the spiritual life. Such a complex the Church is, in its very NEED OF CHURCH COMPLEX in idea. It is not indeed the actual Kingdom of God, the Kingdom which, in its fulness and unfailingness, is man's final social call and which lies beyond the grave; but yet the most massive witness to, and means towards, that Kingdom during this our earthly training- time. The Kingdom has still not come; the Church came promptly, indeed its elements existed from the first in the central character of the Christian religion — ^its givenness, and in the apostolic band, not self-chosen nor popularly chosen, but chosen by the one, earthly, visible Jesus. We will not be so cynical as to consider the early articulation of cleric and lay, of Priest, Bishop and Pope, or even the mediaeval theocracy, as just simply a long story of decay and of fraud; but we will see here, in considerable part, the operation of two fundamental needs of religion : the need of the special complex, and the need of givenness, of prevenience. And in all our criticisms or claims we will, if we primarily seek the lines which religion itself indicates to us as immanent to her own life and history, assume, as essential, some such complex and givenness. It is deeply satisfactory to note how finely these points have been seized by such, otherwise (respectively) strongly Pro- 112 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR testant and somewhat Agnostic writers as Professor Ernst Troeltsch in his great Sozial- lehren, and Mr. A. L. Smith in his brilliant Church and State in the Middle Ages, Indeed, in this their keen sense that the religious complex cannot be straightaway conceived as to be built up from below, in such wise as can be and are the other complexes, these two thinkers have advanced, I think, even beyond von Gierke (so great when engrossed away from immediate politics) and his strik- ing English expounders, the late Professor F. W. Maitland and the Rev. Dr. J. N. Figgis. The two chief functions of the Church, then, will here be the persistent, vivid witness to the reality of God, and of His Kingdom in the Beyond; and the continuous encourage- ment of, and labour at, the most fully Chris- tian compromises, the nearest approaches to the Sermon on the Mount, fruitfully possible in any one age and place. And these highest approximations will be continually reat- tempted, both within her own complex, and without it. Within, by the noblest develop- ment both of the monastic and heroic and of the marital and domestic ideal and practice, and of their richest inter-stimulation, possible ANSWER TO OPENING QUESTION 113 in the particular age. And, outside of the Church's own complex, by the most strenuous preparation, encouragement and sanction of the wisest and widest moralisations of the other complexes, especially also of the State and of War, feasible in the particular civilisa- tion confronting it. By all means let us exact much, require all, of the Church in these two respects; such pressure and criticism will be the truest service to it, and to the great ends of its existence. But the State also will require to be pressed, by us all, its servants, ever to rise to its own level and kind of morality. The answer to our opening question appears to be as follows. The causes of the (apparent or real) hesita- tion, vagueness and complication on the part of Christians and of their Churches with regard to War in general, or to any particular War, are, of course, always in some degree, faulty and remediable. Yet they also spring from the very strength, and from the strictly co-related difficulty, of the Christian position itself. The teaching, implications and life of our Lord are free from all Gnosticism — ^there is 114 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR no shrinking from the body, marriage, the family, society, the State, as intrinsically evil; yet the attention, heart, will and work of Jesus are absorbed away from these things as they operate, according to their specific, intrinsic laws and needs, during and for this transitory life. But then, again. His soul is thus absorbed away, not for concentration upon fanatical dreams or, say, idle fancies, or, at least, upon things no greater than those from which it turns away: for it is concen- trated upon the quite ultimate, the fully abiding realities, upon God and upon souls seeking and finding Him in His Kingdom. Hence there are, in strictness, no regulations for this transitory life as such, but exhorta- tions to recognise its transitoriness, and maxims for the abiding life. Yet, at bottom, not even these maxims absorb Jesus, but the realities from which they come and to which they go; and it is this metaphysical ground- work, certainty and afiirmation which keeps His ethics, in all their immense tension and tenderness, free from all sentimentality, abstraction, or decay. The end thus proposed to us can be, and is, an abiding end, precisely because it is thus so entirely ultimate and metaphysical; it CHRISTIAN DOUBLE POLARITY 115 remains as true, as fresh, as fruitful, as neces- sary to our full vocation, and our full soul's assuagement now, as it was when He preached it with His earthly lips. But it is, thus, in its fulness, directly applicable, actually executed, not in this life, but in that one. Yet this same end can and must and does, as nothing else succeeds in doing, leaven, purify, sweeten, raise, advance, in various ways and degrees, the several levels and ranges of our human life even here, although it can do this only by various mitigations, compounds, indirect- nesses, compromises. The uncompromising Transcendence and the compromising Imman- ence, the intense touch of God the Super- natural, and the genial dilution of it within the human nature which, in its essential qualities and needs, is good and comes from Him, are both necessary and closely inter- related in our Christian call and work. Never- theless they are inevitably each different from the other, and demand a certain polarity and alternation in the soul's complete life. The double duty and fruitfulness of the Christian individual and of the Christian Church would thus consist in the strenuous bringing to light, in the devoted living, of this, as it were, amphibious life; this doubly ii6 CHRISTIANITY IN FACE OF WAR solicited, this (metaphysically) intermediate position of man's soul. Such devotedness would have to manifest itself in the persistence and vividness with which God, the Kingdom, the ultimate life of the soul, of souls, would be apprehended and loved and preached, as thus abidingly real and final; and in the alert- ness and disinterestedness with which every, however small, however difficult advance in the approximations to that full eventual life and standard would be sought out, or en- couraged and sustained. In the proportion that these two great tasks, intrinsic to the Christian position, are thus devotedly accomplished does the residual complication appear to be clearly inevitable, as itself indeed a proof and expression of the noble realism of the Christian insight and ideal, based, as these are, upon the meta- physical reality and nature of God, of man, and of their interrelations. And thus especially the earthly, human State will not have any bounds set to its possible improvements, and yet this hopefulness will be free from all Utopianism. For the Kingdom in which there is only justice and love, not force, is real and already extant, but not here; and the work of getting, however slowly, intermittently, THE CHURCH AND THE KINGDOM 117 costingly nearer to that ideal for us here, can ever begin anew, can ever become more largely realised, because this our ideal here is already fully real there. There, there is no War; and here War can be made less and less frequent, extensive, unmitigated, more and more filled with ethical motives, with justice, and even love, things without which the State itself cannot persist, extend and truly flourish, things indeed, never, nowhere wholly absent from the life and aim of man. THE GERMAN SOUL AND THE GREAT WAR Much admirable writing has already appeared in England upon the causes, remote and proximate, of the present world-war, so that even the least modest and best equipped of mortals might wellhesitate before he attempted to bring a further contribution of his own. And, as will be rendered clear in a moment, my special limitations are numerous and grave. Especially may my filial piety and sense of deep indebtedness appear doomed to render any utterance of mine, just now, inevitably disloyal to one side or to the other> — ^it will be colourless or else truculent and embittering. Certainly, nothing can be here attempted that could compare with the monumental political authority of Sir Edward Grey's despatches, or with the delicate politi- cal penetration of the French Yellow Book (especially the earlier documents), with the brilliant literary quality furnished by Sir Walter Raleigh in his Might is Right, or with the first-hand evidence as to the present mentality of the Prussian General Military ii8 FINE WORK BY OTHERS 119 Staff furnished by the German War Book; nor, further back, with such searching revela- tions of the latter-day German political soul as are furnished by the strikingly contrasted memoirs of Princes Bismarck and Biilow. These and other documents, and the events accumulating weekly under the eyes of all, have by now fully proved and elucidated the massive existence and the peculiar charac- ter of the present German Real-folitik, All men, at least here in England, see and know that this frankly Machiavellian policy, origin- ally special to the Prussian militarist school, is now practised, inculcated, systematised and assumed by Germany (in so far as Germany now operates as a determining political, diplomatic and military power) with a deliberation, preparedness, persistency and ruthlessness, both towards its own German instruments and towards its non- German opponents, unmatched, on such a scale and amidst such civilised peoples, throughout the annals of the world. There is, then, no occasion to attempt again the establishment of this great fact itself. Nor could I add much towards explaining the origins of this mentality amidst the specific Prussians. I can only attempt vividly to eluci- 120 THE GERMAN SOUL date and analyse, by means of the generally German half of my own blood, those general German idiosyncrasies which have permitted, or even favoured, this large domination of the Prussian spirit, and those other general German characteristics which we can trust will eventually overcome this same spirit — a spirit not confined to Germany, and which is even more the enemy of the German soul itself than it can ever be of our own military peace. I here purpose, first to state the nature and range of my qualifications and interest; and then to attempt a vivid account and exemplification of the main psychic, mental and moral needs, affinities, weaknesses and strengths of the German soul, in contrast with the English — both as seen from within. And in a second stage I will seek out the main influences of German religion and irreligion upon these German weaknesses and strengths ; and I will strive to discover and locate the probabilities, the hopes, the ideals which can and ought to lead and steady us in this sad welter of conflict, and in the hardly less difiicult work of reconstruction. Thus four sections must hold the substance of what I have here to say. AUTHOR'S ANTECEDENTS 121 I Many a pure Englishman has lived much more in Germany, especially amongst Prussians proper, than has been the case with myself. Of my sixty-three years of life, well over forty have been spent in England; and only twice has a full year been lived unbrokenly amongst a Teutonic people, — ^in Vienna and in the Austrian Tyrol. Moreover, though my father was of pure German blood, he was entirely West German; his father was from Coblenz, his mother from Mainz, and this whilst those territories had still some twenty years to run as CathoHc Prince-Bishoprics strongly opposed to Protestant Prussia. My father was born at Ratisbon (Bavaria) in 1795. My grand- father had moved, from the chancellorship to the last Prince-Bishop of Treves, into the diplomatic service of Austria, — ^at first under the last two Holy Roman Emperors, Leopold n. and Francis I. And my father himself continued this general and genial, quite un-Prussian, German spirit, as an Austrian military officer and diplomat, and as an Oriental traveller and botanist, up to his death in 1870. The racial, national attraction 122 THE GERMAN SOUL which, increasingly since his Indian travels in 1833, rivalled that of German Austria, was, assuredly, never Prussia, but always England. In my own case it was inevitable that Eng- land, almost from the first, equalled, and then, fairly early, out-balanced, in social and political matters, the attrait of Austria, even though I have never received anything but kindness from that country, and though I felt keenly having to decide against her, in her present unhappy involvement against England. Born in Florence, when my father was already fifty-seven, of a young English, or rather Scotch, mother; seeing Austria for the first time, from seven' to eight, and then, practically for the last time, at eighteen; never at school or university there or indeed elsewhere, but coming away from Vienna in 1 871, an invalid for many years, and exempted, as such, from military service; Italy, then Belgium, with my seven years' residence at my father's Embassy in each, could not fail to be more real to me than Austria. And since those early years it has been England that has been my home, except for nine winters spent in Rome, a summer in Westphalia, and two short visits to Jena, Heidelberg and Wiirzburg, GERMAN AND SCOTTISH STRAINS 123 and one (further) visit to the Tyrol. And an English wife and British-born daughters of course strengthened these British ties. Nevertheless, I am continuously conscious, by the mental methods and habits natural to me, in matters of history, philosophy, theology, of a certain subtle difference in temper and instinct, throughout a considerable range of my nature, from even the dearest of my many dear English friends, and indeed, in a lesser degree, from the non-German blood and range within myself. This consciousness of difference and of isolation, with its sadness, all but wholly and promptly disappears in the society of Scotchmen, so that it probably springs as much from my Scottish blood as from my German. In any case the general German affinity I am tracing here, brings me, I find, no nearer to the Prussian mentality than the pure Englishman is brought, by his affinity, to the Prussian state of soul; nor does this affinity prevent my social and political outlook and sympathies from being thoroughly, consciously, gratefully EngHsh. Even in 1858 I remember feeling strongly, in Florence, with the Italian movement for an Italian Italy; and I have never lost this feeling, even though I early came to realise 124 THE GERMAN SOUL how pure was the administration, and how light the taxation, by Austria, of Tuscany, Lombardy and Venice; and ever since eigh- teen, Edmund Burke (in all but his latest, shrill utterances) and, hardly less early, Samuel Johnson have been amongst my chief inspirers in such large social and political matters. Yet my much loved tutor, from eight to fifteen, was a Rhenish Prussian Lutheran, and my education was, for those years, super- vised by the well-known Catholic historian, the Rhenish Prussian diplomat, Alfred von Reumont. And my late initiation into Hebrew I owe to the Hessian convert, the strongly anti-Prussian Catholic Priest-Professor, Dr. Gustav Bickell. Most of the recent books that have influenced me much — the great works of Rohde, Oldenberg, Gunkel, Bernard Duhm, Heinrich Holtzmann, Otto von Gierke, Ernst Troeltsch — are all German. And then there have been the friendships, w4th roots too deep, I trust, for even this terrible war and its poignant differences to destroy, with such Catholic laymen as Martin Spahn and such CathoHc clerics as Albert Ehrhard and Joseph Prenner; and with Protestant University Professors, such as Rudolf Eucken and Ernst THEORY PERVADES THE GERMAN 125 Troeltsch. Heinrich Holtzmann, that utterly guileless soul and ceaselessly generous friend, has already gone to where wars are no more. H An Indian Swami, who from Brahmanism had come to Roman Catholic Christianity, but who retained a grateful veneration for the Vedic literature at its best, once insisted to me upon the bewilderment which seized him when, in the company of West Europeans, he had to sufFer from their perpetual deprecia- tion of mysticism. " What these Europeans thus airily despise as ' mere mysticism,' that," said the Swami, " for us Indians is our very life." Similarly, theory, system, Weltanschauung^ is, for the average English- man, something that instantly puts him ill at ease, or at least something that he disbelieves and avoids; for the German, it is in his very blood. Indeed, the Continental European generally is, in this important respect, very unlike, not indeed the Scotchman, but the Englishman. Thus a young maritime lawyer from Genoa reported to me, after a year's life 126 THE GERMAN SOUL spent, it is true, not amidst University students or men of letters, but amongst young English fellow lawyers in London, that the main difference he had found between the two sets of his contemporaries, of the same class and same calling, in Italy and England, had been as follows: that in Italy he could always promptly tell whether his comrade was clean-living or not, — since, as soon and as long as he was of good Hfe, his thought and talk would overflow with prob- lems and theories about the State, War, the Church, Religion, etc.; and, as soon as he abandoned a good life, all such interests would go, and only dirty talk or mere " shop " would remain. But that in England his companions, whether clean or unclean, had all equally shrunk from theorising about anything whatsoever; and had restricted their talk, during work-time, to " shop," and, in their free time, to sport. And this difference is doubtless even larger between Germans and Englishmen. A young German scholar and pastor quite recently reported to me, as the main observation of an unexpected kind made by himself, during the half-year he had just spent amongst all kinds of religious groups in England, the very general unpopu-' ENGLISH MISTRUST OF THEORY 127 larity, not of Roman Catholicism (as he had forecasted), but of Unitarianism ; and how he had finally discovered that this widespread dislike sprang mostly, not from any sensitive orthodoxy, but from the deep-rooted, ever alert, antipathy of the average pure English- man to everything deliberately systematic, intellectualist or doctrinaire. I take it that nine in ten out of all Englishmen would echo the answer given to a French scholar friend of mine, who, upon asking the authorities of numerous large English schools, Roman Catho- lic included, what was the view of life, the general scheme, that they aimed at producing in the minds of their boys, was answered in substance by all : " We do not rear prigs here ! " Extreme examples of this German thirst for theory, and of the English contrary shrinking from all systematic thought, are often in my mind. Thus I turned over the leaves of a German book on Inn-keeping — Das Hotelwesen — and, sure enough, there was a first part on the Theory of Inn-keeping, and a second part on its Practice. Contrast this with an English book where — after quoting from Cardinal Newman the noble description of how, confronted by the slums of one of our vast, wicked cities, he would turn Pantheist 128 THE GERMAN SOUL or Atheist, but for the still, small voice of conscience within himself — the author goes on to say: " I do not ask. Is this the frame of mind of a philosopher? I only inquire. Is this English? And I answer. It is not! " Surely, if to require a theory of inn-keeping is a fantastic weakness, an attitude towards life capable of shirking the fact and problem of evil is a deplorable incompleteness for any sane, adult human soul. 2 Now this continuous need of theory, of system, is, doubtless, one of the primary causes of all that the German effects and is of deep, abiding worth and fruitfulness, and, conversely, of all that the German effects and is of a shallow and arid, of a transitory, and even of a mischievous and destructive kind. It is this innate need of system that renders him steady, but also obstinate; virile and brutal; profound and pedantic; comprehen- sive and rich in outlook, and rationalist and doctrinaire. It turns him into the one or the other man, in various degrees, ways and combinations, according as this thirst for system, and its direct consequences within a nature such as his, is or is not sufficiently GERMAN SYSTEM WHERE WISE 129 checked, completed and purified by a vivid, continuous sense of how inexhaustible is the depth of real life, and how largely hidden remains for us the always terribly actual, delicate interdependence of its simultaneous varieties and successive stages, amongst the several places, times and races, such as they environ man or are incarnated by him, in their severally always limited, slow, costly contributions, interchanges and advances. Can there well be nobler fruits of this systematic bent than the sensitive, all-round penetration into the ancient Greek search after, and belief in. Immortality and Eternity, that informs Rohde's Psyche ? or than Hein- rich Holtzmann's analysis of the religious experience and speculative theory of St. Paul ? or than Gunkel's dehght in tracing the spiritual depth of content, and the artistic beauty of form, furnished by the spiritually transfigured folk-lore embedded in the book of Genesis? or than Wilcken's Aegyptische Ostrakay that loving, infinitely patient resus- citation of the lives of the obscure populace of Greek Egypt as chronicled by them upon broken potsherds ? And indeed this tenacious thirst after an organism, a completeness, what grand results it yields in the soberer parts of 130 THE GERMAN SOUL HegePs Logic ; in the analysis of the consti- tuents of human certitude by Volkelt ; in the monumental presentation by Gierke of the mediaeval conceptions of the State, of their early sources, their later dissolution, and their elements of abiding worth; and, surely, not least in the massive re-thinking, and sifting out, of the social implications, aids and diffi- culties of Christianity, given us by Troeltsch ! In all these cases the thirst for wholeness and closely-knit organisation has worked with, and in, other great gifts and needs, and has helped these Germans to rear works of a largely unique and abiding kind — ^upon the whole, superior to the corresponding English attempts. In other cases, where this thirst has remained comparatively unchecked or unsupplemented, it leads to certain special faults and absurdities, which, in their milder forms, are common enough amongst Germans, but which, since they are very truly the defects of a fundamental German quality, are strik- ingly rarely noted, still less resented, as faults, by Germans themselves. To illustrate my meaning, there is Kant's, the old bachelor's, detailed instructions to the lads, his students, in his lectures on Education, as to the suckHng, swathing, GERMAN SYSTEM WHERE ABSURD 131 cradling, weaning of infants, and still more of the highly significant reason he assigns for such preposterous meddling — that many of his hearers would become tutors in private families, and that " it happens at times that further children are born in the house, and that a tactful tutor can aspire to be the confidant of the parents and to be consulted by them also with respect to the physical education (of such children), and this also because one is, often, the only Gelehrte in the house." (Kant's Sdmmtliche Werke^ ed. Hartenstein, 1868, vol. viii., p. 472.) Thus Kant quietly assumes, without an inkling as to the rich comicality of the assumption, that, because a man has passed through his German school and university and is devoting his still early, bachelor years to teaching, he is more Hkely to know, or to learn satisfactorily, than the first washerwoman with children of her own in any village, how often to suckle, when to wean, how to swathe, to cradle, the baby! Also, that the entire household, women and men, will defer to the thoroughly dry-nurse theorisings of such a sorry pedant. But, indeed, are there many Germans who would instantly seize the full depth and breadth of this absurdity? 132 THE GERMAN SOUL I take it to be almost necessary for a man to be, not purely English, but Scotch or half- German, if he is to realise fully the extent to which this instinctive deference to the Gelehrte and to Wissenschafty to theory and system, sways even the most materiaHst, anarchist or sceptical of Germans. It is, in itself, doubtless a noble, idealistic trait, and helps to give a certain dignity of heroism and faith to much in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, in Feuerbach and Strauss, even here and there in Stirner and in Haeckel, which otherwise would be entirely wild and repulsive. Yet it is this also that readily makes anything which is suffi- ciently theorised appear to a German as worthy of a hearing or even of belief. Not only or chiefly because this or that piece of reasoning starts from, keeps close to, and leads securely to facts, all capable of re-testing; but largely on no further ground than that it is reasoning of a closely-knit, or daring, or clear, or para- doxical kind, does it readily fascinate or dominate the German mind. 3 This thirst for, and final obsession by, general ideas and laws, theory and system, leads at times to the, largely quite unconscious, GERMAN MYTHOLOGICAL BENT 133 mythology of giving to ideas, outside of any mind or personality, human or divine, that thinks them, a real existence, indeed a creative power. The great example of such unconscious mythology is, of course, Hegel, who, towards the end of his longer Logic, succeeds in bridging over the chasm between Nature and conscious Spirit, as these have been previously discriminated by himself, only through suddenly assuming in Nature a certain consciousness and volition charac- teristic, not of Nature, but of Spirit only. The dangerous reinforcement, chiefly of the subtlest and most subversive weaknesses of the German soul, by Pantheism and Monism of every kind, will be considered in my second stage. Here I want only to show, by the early life and thought of Hegel, how congenial some such Pantheism was to him, and (to anticipate a further effect of the German intense sys- tematisation and unification) how ominously early and spontaneously this Pantheism did not shrink from finding the State to be essen- tially founded upon force alone. Thus Schelling, at twenty-one (February 179s), answers Hegel, then twenty-five, with regard to the sufficiency of Kant's moral proof for behef in a distinct personal Being, by 134 THE GERMAN SOUL quoting to him Lessing's declaration : " Also for ourselves the orthodox conceptions as to God are no more. We push afield beyond all Personal Being." Some . few months later SchelUng's second publication, on The Ego as the Principle of Philosophy^ insists upon how the causahty of the Infinite, Absolute Ego, may not be conceived as Morahty or as Wisdom, Personality or Consciousness, but only as absolute Force. Hegel assents to this polemic against the divine attributes. And when in 1801 Hegel discusses the nature of the State, in connection with the Constitution of Germany, he indeed expresses the keenest antipathy to Prussia, — ^where " the people is treated indeed with rationality and according to necessity, but not with trust and liberty," "a state whose dreary emptiness strikes every one who enters whichever of its villages happens to be the first thus come upon, or who does not measure its abiding strength by the ephemeral energy to which a solitary genius [Frederick H.] has been able to force it up." But already he insists that " liberty is possible only within the legal union of a people into a state," and develops, in conjunction with a sympathetic account of Machiavelli and his policy of force, how the highest duty of the HEGEL ON STATE AS FORCE 135 State is its self-preservation, and how what in private life would be crimes can here become duties, — " gangrenous limbs cannot be healed with lavender-water." Whether a state is really a state or not, is decided, here, in the final resort by one only great test: War. Indeed Hegel deliberately eliminates, one by one, all the other supposed characteristics of the State, as indifferent to its conception. (Dilthey's Jugendgeschichte He gels, A b hand" lungen der Berliner Akademiey 1905, Pt. iv., pp. 19; 40, 41; 144, 142.) The Pantheism and the Machiavellism thus more or less evoke and strengthen each other; and, if the latter is also largely called forth by the politi- cal misery of Germany, and the seeming hope- lessness of any other resource than the use of such force, yet the Pantheism especially, but indeed the Machiavellism also, evidently fascinate both Schelling and Hegel by their own severe, indeed savage simpHcity and system. The Prussian State had been organised in a close-knit, conscientiously heartless and humourless bureaucratic hierarchy by King Frederick H., a great general, but — pace Carlyle — ^not a really great, widely forecast- ing statesman, still less a spiritually great, 136 THE GERMAN SOUL since not a morally pure, private character. This narrowly benevolent despotism, this " enlightened " mechanism, was indeed the creation of clear heads, iron wills and a certain cold heroism; but it required, if it was to live for long and at large even simply amongst non-Prussian Germans, the admixture and clothing of sympathy, tenderness, imagina- tion, humour, humility — it required the aid of temperaments, souls, races, other than its own. And these complements and draperies, this large supplementation (rather than any essential modification) of that Prussian nu- cleus were furnished by such men of rich heart, deep conscience and delicate historic sense, as Hegel himself and von Stein and Niebuhr, Jacob Grimm and Leopold von Ranke. True, the unscrupulous devastating inva- sions of Louis XIV., and, later on, the iron oppression of Napoleon, had awakened and concentrated a most legitimate German hos- tility to such French intrusion, which found a noble and ennobling expression in the War of Liberation. Noble, because not only force- ful and courageous, but also moderate and just, since Prussia, as one of the Allies who occupied France after their great joint defeat of Napoleon at Leipzig, neither claimed nor FRENCH & PRUSSIAN " REALISM " 137 kept (any more than did Austria or Russia) a single inch of French territory. It was undoubtedly Napoleon's quite unjustifiable re- turn from Elba, and the bloody Hundred Days that culminated in Waterloo, which reawak- ened the unhappy spirit of wakeful hostility and reprisals against France. And some fifty years later, the third Napoleon's international restlessness and the general incompetence of his government offered some real reason, and much opportunity, towards working up a pretext, for a further great German war with France. And it is true again that the ideal of a unified Germany was and is, in itself, most legitimate and noble; nor is it anything but natural, and cannot be intrinsically wrong, for a unified and strong Germany to seek a colonial expansion truly necessary for itself. Nevertheless it is impossible not to see, now especially, very clearly that Frederick 11. of Prussia was as " realist," as unscrupulous towards Silesia, as Louis XIV. had been towards the Palatinate; that the manner in which the war of 1870 was brought about, in which Alsace - Lorraine was treated, and in which the sudden riches and overwhelming prestige that came to Germany were met — 138 THE GERMAN SOUL that all this was a terrible " success," that it involved a Nemesis, for Prussian militarism, slow and obscure but very certain, and at last majestically plain. Whatever may be the differences of social and religious conviction between German Socialists, Junkers, Centre-men and Govern- ment officials, or between German Agnostics, Materialists, Catholics and Lutherans, cer- tain German characteristics, common to them all, evidently outweigh — ^at least for a time — the influence of the restraints, modifications or stimulations which their several social or religious convictions could, or do, bring to bear upon them. 4 The difficult point for any adequate explana- tion consists here in such an apparently life- and-death allegiance of a people, not only highly educated and, in the professional classes, mostly awake even unto scepticism, but of a people, surely, incurably ideaUstic and mystical, to so thoroughly cold and calculating, mechanical and cynical a system as is the Prussian Real-folitik^ with its con- ception, and largely its practice, of a frankly unmoral statesmanship. Yet it is also just at PRUSSIANISM AND GERMAN MIND 1 39 this point that, in addition to the need and love of system, various further currents of feeling, experience, fact and need, all more or less again specifically German, can be traced as they converge and coalesce into one very tenacious, because thus both complex and close-knit whole, a whole which, if irksome in many of its effects as such a whole, is nevertheless profoundly congenial to the Teutonic mind in its several constituents. For one thing, this people, so highly gifted in so many, and in some of the deepest ways, possesses (facts cry the thing aloud) no strong native capacity, instinct or need for self- government or for the wise government of non-German races. " The Germans not a political race " is, at bottom, the judgment passed upon them by their own statesmen, when these are of real size and when they are speaking their quiet mind, such as Bismarck and Biilow. But these and other statesmen and rulers have, unfortunately for all the world, first tolerated, then encouraged, and finally led, the German passions as well as the German reason along the very path thus not fitted for them. Here again over-systematising — ^the militar- ism that would be simultaneously a colonialism 140 THE GERMAN SOUL — is apparent as a constituent cause of the otherwise strange failure of Germany's colonis- ing policy. And this very over-systematising doubtless also hinders the German from re- cognising this excess as the true cause of the mischief it actually creates. Hence the roots of his colonial failure must be elsewhere, he thinks. He sees and feels how triumphantly successful he has been as a soldier under Frederick the Great; in the War of Libera- tion; and finally in 1870, 1 87 1. And again, he sees how uncommonly prosperous he is in manufactures, trade, commerce, mercantile marine. Thus he is not an unpractical dreamer, but a hard-headed organiser; and hence he possesses the strict right, because the full might, to rule a large part of the world, to hold a considerable " place in the sun." And indeed, are not those mihtary and these manu- facturing and mercantile capacities and suc- cesses intrinsically cognate, the first to gifts for home government, the second to the genius for colonial expansion ? The German is, I believe, mistaken in both these inferences. In military matters it is order, discipHne, organisation, system which — ^at least during long stages of humanity and against certain enemies — ^are overwhelmingly GERMAN IMPERIALISTS MISTAKEN 141 more important than individual judgment and initiative, ready understanding of the mentahty of the antagonist, capacity for the rapid modification of plans, and the like. In political matters the limit is soon reached where anything great can now-a-days be achieved by the former gifts alone, and without at least a large admixture of the latter. Moltke's all but omnipotent General Staff, with his own genius in its midst, and with no such genius in the French head- quarters, worked wonders in the War of 1870, even though we w^ould not go even to that General Staif for special insight into the French character, or for the development of the moderately independent habits necessary also for Germans if they are to succeed in political life. But Bismarck fared badly when, a few years later, he attempted to coerce the German Catholics, for here the other set of virtues was of primary importance, and in these imfonderabilia the Iron Chancellor was, at least in this case, singularly lacking. Manufacturing and mercantile powers, again, do not necessarily imply colonising gifts, if only because the manufacturer and merchant are not, as such, supreme except within the small world (and even there only 142 THE GERMAN SOUL over a part of the activity) of their employes and customers, whereas colonial founders are, or must attempt to be, supreme rulers through- out that entire colonial world. And it is precisely where the Prussianised German attains to supreme power, that his defects show and tell. " Live and let live," — ^patience, tolerance, geniality, comradeship, trust, gener- osity; the willingness, the desire, to see races, social organisations, religions, subtly different from our own, developing, each at its best, in an atmosphere of large tolerance, with the benefit of the doubt (where the State appears endangered by such tolerance) always given in favour of the liberty and responsibility of these various individuals and complexes — ^all this is fundamentally necessary for successful colonial rule, and this is not necessarily con- tained in manufacturing and mercantile gifts. And, let it be noted, if a very pronounced mihtarist spirit and organisation are hardly compatible even with a full and vigorous development of a free home-government, they are in keen conflict with the capacities and methods essential to any permanently successful rule over alien races, where these are of any considerable civilisation, and in our own difiicult times. It is no accident that WHENCE ANTI-ENGLISH FEELING 143 England, a great colonial power, is not a great military power, and that it holds India with, comparatively, a handful of European troops. You are hardly likely to possess both gifts and tastes to a high degree; and you will, in any case, find that an intense militarism profoundly hinders, and does not help, a wholesome colonial rule. Recent Germany, unfortunately for us all, thinks that not only are these things, at their intensest, thoroughly compatible, but that the one neces- sarily furnishes the might, and hence the right, to the other. S The bitterness felt by so many home Ger- mans against the English successes amongst foreign and native races, is doubtless greatly intensified by the EngHsh appearing to the German to succeed thus, as it were in playing — ^as cricketers and golfers, as " good fellows " who, with a school and university education of little concentration, and with, say, some six hours of office work, comparatively simple administrative machinery, and small bodies of military, succeed where he fails. These Britishers are mostly not theoretical at all, they possess loosely-knit minds and moderate 144 THE GERMAN SOUL passions. And the German works intensely, systematically, he prepares everything; and yet his complex bureaucracy, his militarist self-repression, his huge plans lead to little or nothing. Thus the amateur and " flannelled fool " utterly out-distances the iron will and fierce labour of highly trained specialists. Hogarth's Idle Apprentice, unjustly yet quite understandably, envied the solid successes of the Industrious Apprentice. But would not the Industrious Apprentice grow wildly bitter if the Apprentice who seemed to him Idle, at least as compared with himself, some- how carried off one great solid success after the other from under his very eyes ? And then, again, there has been the great material prosperity, the influx of gold, after the war with France in 1870, a turning from agriculture and the inner life of Science, History, Music, Poetry, Philosophy, Religion, to Industrialism and the visible, tangible world of Banking, Commerce, Colonisation, Fleets and Armies. And, let us note carefully, the theoretical capacity and need, a sort of genuine idealism, gives here passion and power to one system more. The passion is hard and fierce, because rare powers and deep needs have here been deflected from their co-natural GREATNESS VERSUS BIGNESS 145 subject-matters. And the passion now seeks colossal material things, because, if we are made for spiritual greatness but turn away from it, then we try to make up for such spiritual greatness by seeking material bigness. The grandly noble acceptance and heroic utilisation of poverty, which revealed and, in great part, occasioned the interior richness of the great Germans before 1870, now largely gave way to a vulgar hunt for material riches. Nations of small territorial expansion now began to be generally despised. And Bismarck helped, terribly largely, to popularise a start- ling insensibiHty to the great spiritual and moral element so subtly present in, and needed by, all permanently fruitful statesmanship. The present great War is bringing to light so much of systematic hardness on the part of German military authorities, that many obser- vers are evidently inclined to attribute an incomparably greater fund of cruelty to the German, especially the Prussian, nature than can be found amongst their Western neigh- bours, and especially the English. Yet I doubt whether there exist sufficient facts to require us to hold that the German generally, 146 THE GERMAN SOUL or even the Prussian, independently of his congenital need of concentration and capacity for strain, and when these peculiarities of his have not been racially roused and heightened, is more inclined to cruelty than the English- man ; or that the pure Englishman is capable of such concentration and strain, and conse- quently of such irritation and vehemence when, thus concentrated and strained, he is strongly and persistently opposed. Hence I take it that the two races cannot, in this question of cruelty, be justly compared with regard to it alone, or with each other straight away. The competent Ethnologist Dr. A. H. Keane writes : " All admit that the German is capable of a deep love of nature, of rare poetical feeling, and devotion to any cause he may have embraced. Hence he is easily led into extremes, genuine sentiment becomes over-sensitive, anger rises to fury, resentment to rancour and hatred, in the pursuit even of noble ideals." {^he Living Races of Mankind^ p. 554.) Here I would only limit or elaborate this observation in two directions. For one thing, in the important difference between the German and the Englishman as regards self-consciousness. A distinctly able. GERMANS NOT SELF-CONSCIOUS 147 well-educated, upper-class South German lady first visited England when middle-aged; and she reported to me, after a month's continuous stay in London, that she had (amongst other things) been carefully observing the coun- tenances of the hundreds of Anglican clerics she had been meeting; and that upon every one of these faces was written unmistakably " hypocrite." Only after many a bewildered surmise did I discover the interestingly far- reaching, because racial, reason of this prepos- terously unfair judgment. Anglican clerics are mostly very self-conscious — she had noticed this harmless, but (also to my own German half) annoying peculiarity. They are, in reality, self-conscious only as every pure EngHshman tends to become, the moment he defends, still more if he is pledged to defend, a theory of any kind, however fully he may believe it to be true. The exceptions, of the Roman Catholic, with his massively tradi- tional, strongly objective, and close-knit creed and practice, and of the man of science, with, again, his highly objective, indeed mostly dry, or immediately experimental, subject- matter, and, between these two, of some, chiefly (I think) more or less Broad Church, Anglican clerics, only confirm this rule. Now 148 THE GERMAN SOUL the German is not, in the English sense, self- conscious; he is as anxious to get away from himself (and others) into ideas and systems, as the Englishman fears to lose this conscious- ness of himself and of others. " My happy moments," Ranke often says in his most winning letters, " are when I, for a while, completely forget myself." The German is indeed considerably more nervous, sensitive, offendible, vindictive than is the Englishman; but this leads him to get away from this readily painful self into ideas and theory and into himself, as it is there projected and enlarged. Because the German can, does and must throw himself, heart and soul, into an idea or system, which promptly becomes for him more real than himself, and before which pale his fellow creatures, especially the pro- founder differences between himself and them (differences which, of course, will make it impossible for them to see eye to eye with him about this idea or system, which has now become the sensitive centre of his very soul) : therefore does the German so habitually mis- calculate the effect of his own actions, whilst and after he is thus obsessed, upon others, especially where these are of the very different, loose-knit type of soul. HIGH PITCH OF GERMAN SOUL 149 Somewhat as the ancient Greeks and Romans, the entire mediaeval world and modern times till well past St. Teresa (1515- 1582) possessed no term for what we unhappy recent generations now popularly mean by " nerves " and " nervousness " — even with Fenelon (1651-1715) the notion is rare — so the German possesses no word for the English " self-consciousness." In both cases, the absence of the term implies the absence, or (at least) the only slight and diffused presence, of the thing. The equivalent given for " self- conscious " in some English - German dic- tionaries, " selhsibewusst^'^ means, of course, nothing of the kind, but " well aware of his own merits or importance." Thus, then, it was all but inevitable that my shrewd, experi- enced lady should gravely misjudge as she assuredly did. And a second thing I would emphasise is the high pitch, strain and cost, and hence danger, of the German's psychic life, where its owner is at all of an educated and awakened mind and character. From the nature of the case, this assertion is incapable of mathemati- cal or statistical proof; indeed what I believe to be (more or less moderately) at work within the great majority of cases, the healthy and ISO THE GERMAN SOUL normal ones, can be at all vividly presented only by the picture of the excesses (of a kind felt to be specifically German) as these appear easily traceable — ^that is, amongst the few, the maladif and abnormal souls. In this manner and degree we can, I believe, learn important psychic facts from the case of Friedrich Nietzsche, if taken in conjunc- tion with the widespread fascination exercised upon Germans by precisely some of the least balanced of his later moods and visions. Hence we may fittingly close the first stage of this attempt to picture the German soul, as elucidative of this great war, by a short description of Nietzsche in the attitude that here concerns us, and of his friend Erwin Rohde, the far-sighted courageous critic of the dangerous extravagances of the other, as these appeared in Nietzsche's letters to himself. Nietzsche's case and mentality has already been urged by countless writers, mostly, how- ever, with little perception of how various, indeed acutely contradictory, were his succes- sive obsessions (hence, at times, also violently anti-Prussian, anti-militarist); and, again, how pure-lived and devoted, how sensitive and tragically costly were the private bearing and temper of this rarely-gifted soul. Here I NIETZSCHE AND GERMAN EXCESS 151 would only emphasise the touching pleadings of the nobly devoted, similarly rich-natured, but far more balanced friend Rohde, with this his brilliant meteoric contemporary. I under- stand these appeals as anxieties and apprehen- sions which any man who congenitally knows and deeply loves and believes in the German soul, but who (for some reason) is also suffi- ciently outside it to feel this soul's especial dangers, might well, with but few modifica- tions, address to this strong, sensitive, self- destructive creature of God. Thus, in 1878 Rohde pleads with Nietzsche, who is now beginning his (intensely theoreti- cal, yet amongst Germans all the more influen- tial) crusade against Christian ethics ; " We are all terrible egoists (I know well, beloved friend, how much more I am this than you are!). Yet no one ought to attempt to extract from our souls the prick which admonishes us that we ought not to be such. Perhaps it is the fact, that we do the Good really because of the sense of pleasure connected with its execu- tion; but if a man derives pleasure, in a conflict between his egoistic and anti-egoistic impulses, from the sacrifice of the former, this strange fact," this gratification, " cannot pos- sibly be placed on the same level with the IS2 THE GERMAN SOUL movements of his egoistic sense of pleasure; it must be put, as all the world does put it, in opposition to, above, them, in the order of value, and must be venerated as the Good." In 1879 Ro^<i^ tells a mutual friend : " How characteristic of himself Nietzsche is again being! We are, at all times, instantly to favour one only kind of knowledge, of the contempla- tion of life, and are to lose all appetite for every conceivable other kind. Where, in this way, can there remain any * freedom ' of the spirit ? I know only one ' free man ' in the spirit among the entirely great, and that is Goethe; and assuredly he is thus free, only because he was capable of allowing a value to everything in its proper place, and not because he would, forsooth, have taken the liberty (as was done by Nietzsche's supposed free spirit, Voltaire, and his similars) to reject, as so much sheer nonsense, one half of human nature for the sake of the other half ! " In 1887 Rohde tells a friend how deeply touched he has just been in reading the corre- spondence between Wagner and Liszt. " Liszt was evidently always of opinion that Wagner thought little of his musical compositions. And that this suspicion never for one moment brought hesitation into Liszt's unconditional ROHDE AND GERMAN BALANCE 153 devotion to the cause and person of Wagner — this I find more admirable than anything else in the world. In the contemplation of such greatness of heart I find a thousand times more pleasure than in all the talk about the strength, cheerfulness and unscrupulousness of wild beasts of genius with which Nietzsche, in his newest achievement, again regales us." And Nietzsche writes of this very achievement, his TjUt Genealogie der Moral : '* This book, my touchstone for what belongs to me, has the good fortune to be accessible only to minds of the highest and severest disposition ; to the remainder of the world the right ears are lacking." Rohde now belonged for Nietzsche to " the remainder." (0. Crusius, Erwin Rohde, i()02,pp, gS,gg; 113; 118; 159,160.) Soon the pall of hopeless insanity was to descend upon Nietzsche. What rare, rich, resplendent gifts are here! and what alarming, heroic capacity for utter absorption in, entire self-immolation to, one over-vivid conception or system! But we also find, here, in beautiful, friendly ministry, another German figure, penetrated with the finest understanding of, and with all but entirely sufficient remedies against, the characteristic defects of the high qualities of the German soul. 1 54 THE GERMAN SOUL The first stage of this study attempted to describe the fundamental peculiarities of the German soul; an imperious need (as soon as this soul is fully aroused) of theory, system, completeness, at every turn and in every subject-matter; an immense capacity for auto-suggestion and mono-ideism; and an ever proximate danger, as well as power, of becoming so dominated by such vivid projec- tions of the racial imaginings and ideals, as to lose all compelling sense of the limits between such dreams and reality, and especially all awareness, or at least alertness, as to the competing rights and differing gifts, indeed as to the very existence, of other souls and other races, with their intrinsically different civilisations, rights and ideals. Or again a certain consciousness of these others can remain, but they have now become for it simply things, material obstacles, incentives to a ruthless obliteration. Thus this soul easily loses such initial sense as it may possess, of its own abiding need of other races, other civilisa- tions, not to conquer or to absorb, but to love \ ENGLISH & GERMAN COMPARED 155 and to learn from, as so many God-willed complements and correctives of itself, — each peculiar race and civilisation contributing different yet essential elements to the whole of the human spirit-life and civilisation. We thus find a soul startlingly unlike, not the Scotch, but the English. The English faults are, upon the whole. Defects ; the Ger- mans' faults are, mostly. Excesses. The English are too loosely-knit, " go - as - you - please," fragmentary, inarticulate ; a continuous com- promise and individual self - consciousness. The Germans are too tightly buckled-up, too much planned and prepared, too deliber- ately ambitious and insatiable, too readily obHvious of others — especially of their own need of others, of esteeming others and being esteemed by them. The Englishman rarely loses, he would not wish to lose, his direct consciousness of himself, a consciousness which, to himself, is not unpleasant; but neither does he lose, or wish to lose, the corre- sponding direct, work-a-day consciousness of the fellow-creatures around him. The German, where at all fully awake or aroused, wishes to lose, and largely does lose, such a direct, full consciousness of himself as but one amongst his differing fellows, for such IS6 THE GERMAN^SOUL consciousness is painful to him. The English- man inclines to be selfish in a small way — to be egotistic, preferring his own immediate self to the other immediate selves, whom he never ceases to perceive as thus directly around him. He is not, by nature, cruel; but even if he were, this his freedom from all theoretical obsession would save him from a great incite- ment to cruelty. The German tends to forget both his own self and the other empirical selves altogether, to be egoistic, to see directly his system, idea, alone, and only thus (upon and within this now vivid cloud) his own, or his race's, immensely magnified, simply poten- tial, but thus immeasurably more potent, self. Even if, by nature, he is not more cruel than are other races, his visionary obsessions, and especially his unhappy conviction that fear and force are the true roots of all success- ful rule, would make him harsher than those others with their ceaseless awareness of the empirical here and now. Thus the indelible sense of other individual lives keeps the Englishman moderate; the rightness and richness of his theory, in so far as he has one at all, matters comparatively Httle for his own practice. But the German is ever liable to lose such immediate sense of the empirical other RICH SYSTEM WHERE URGENT 157 lives, in his congenital need for, and ready fascination by, theory; so that for him one must account it to be of primary importance that his system shall be adequate, especially that it shall seriously supplement and correct, that it shall not simply project, and (when taken back as thus projected) shall not immensely steady and strengthen, the weak- nesses, prejudices, limitations peculiar to himself qua German. Thus doctrinal religion and philosophy, and their doctrinal negations, doubtless play a larger, or at least a more direct and decisive, part in the German soul's life as a whole, than do the corresponding doctrinal religion and philosophy, and their philosophical negations, in the life of the English soul. I shall now attempt, in this concluding stage, to show shortly how, where and why the four chief types of German religious and philosophical affirmation and negation express, intensify, check or alter the congenital charac- teristics of the Teutonic soul. And I shall end by a short indication as to where appear to lie the roots of reform, within the German soul itself, for its own especial weaknesses and excesses. IS8 THE GERMAN SOUL III Friedrich Naumann, in his Brief e ilber Religion, vividly depicts how, to this very- hour, even in deeply sceptical Berlin itself, it is the religion of our fathers, especially the Christian religion, which (in spite of the many superficial counter-indications) still always deeply affects, and often really determines, the peculiar groupings, strengths and short- comings of men. Now the actual Hfe of such a highly educated and immensely active population as is that of contemporary Germany shows, of course, on the surface a quite bewildering variety of gradations, combinations, affinities, between whatsoever religious and philosophical convic- tions, positive or negative, we may fix upon as primary. But for our purpose we shall probably work with the most useful distinc- tions, if we accept four great groups. There is the Roman Catholic group, represented, let us not forget, by close upon, if indeed not quite, one half of all the German-speaking peoples, although doubtless in large parts of Austria this religious influence is mostly perfunctory. There is the Protestant position which, if taken as still predominantly affirmative and FOUR GERMAN GROUPS STUDIED 159 historically religious, can hardly, in ordinary times, be actively held by more than, say, a fifth or a sixth of all that population, yet which, even in the majority which retains little or no churchgoing or dogmatic faith, is still strong, in moments of stress and conflict, and in combination with other motives and impulses. There is the Idealistic philosophical conviction, which, for the last sixty years, has lost such visible leadership as, for about an equally long time before, it then un- doubtedly possessed amongst the intellec- tually influential classes ; yet which, in mostly hidden and indirect ways, continues very accurately to express, and powerfully to strengthen, the most German peculiarities of the German soul. And, finally, there is MateriaHsm, theoretical and (still more) prac- tical, which, since the fifties, and especially since 1870, has, almost without pause or limit, grown and thriven upon the less noble needs and weaknesses, the immense material suc- cesses, and even the very strength and truth, of the German soul. The Roman Catholic position still teaches and practises, instinctively and massively, in i6o THE GERMAN SOUL frank application within this visible world, the other-worldliness of man's ultimate call, and the priority in worth of this call over his this-world call and duty. The immense importance of these facts and the ever-pressing need of their proclamation require to be remembered if we would be sufficiently grate- ful to Rome, when at her best, and sufficiently appreciative of the difficulties specially in- herited by herself, when at her weakest. The difficulty and weakness here meant I take to have passed through three stages; and the full fruitfulness of the Church, in its this-world orientation, to be reached, only if and when she can completely and persistently resume, and improve and reapply, in the greatly altered circumstances, a certain in- sight and temper which, so far, she most completely attained in the second of these stages. In the first stage, well-nigh to Carolingian times, the overpowering predominance of the other-worldly orientation, and of the cate- gories of Sin and Redemption (as absolutely primary or even as sole), caused the State either to be overlooked or to appear chiefly as part of that sin-occasioned, or at least deeply sin-infected, order out of which Christ CATHOLIC POSITION, FIRST STAGE i6i came to set us free. Thus Christians generally could hardly yet vividly apprehend the State as an essentially ethical complex, possessed of its own unique rights, duties and laws of life; and as necessary, in this its unique character, to the all-round development of man, even of religious man, and of the specifi- cally religious complex, the Church. The existing Roman State was (even after the peace of the Church and up to the ancient Roman Empire's full dissolution in the West) accepted by Christians with little or no attempt to apprehend or to develop its con- ception and function as an ethical complex of a special kind. In the second stage, the early middle ages, the ancient problems acquired a new form and a fresh spirit amongst the newly Christian races and peoples that had nowise, or but slightly, experienced the old Graeco-Roman Empires. The cities, with their free discipline and ordered guild-life, now prepare the ques- tions and the ground for the golden age of Scholasticism, which culminates in Aquinas and in Dante. In this system the leading categories are, no more Sin and Redemption (as in St. Paul and still more in Augustine), but Nature and Supernature, as, in the i62 THE GERMAN SOUL simplest and most spontaneous of images and implications, they can well be said to permeate the original message of Jesus Himself. But now, some eleven centuries after that first, immensely pregnant proclamation, the this- world orientation, which there remains almost entirely implicit, receives a loving attention and careful elaboration, for which that first millennium was not yet ripe. Here we get the recognition of the polarity of man as he is (his orientations both towards sense and the fleeting, and towards spirit and the abiding), recognised as prior to and independent of all sin. Man is indeed a sinner and requires redemption; but, more largely and funda- mentally still, he is a creature with certain natural powers, needs and ends (inclusive of a certain kind of morality and religion), which directly operate for and within space and succession, sense and the body; and a creature touched also by, thirsting for, and elevated to, certain supernatural realities and require- ments, which concern his duration and his spirit, and which find their completion for him, not in this earthly life, but in the other. That centrally natural life (with its morality of the Golden Rule) forms and finds its specific complex in the State; this centrally super- CATHOLIC POSITION, wSECOND STAGE 163 natural life (with its ethics of the Sermon on the Mount) has its specific expression and means in the Church. The State here is recog- nised as essentially ethical, although ethical in an elementary, homely, give-and-take, calculating and self-conscious way; and the Church has not to infuse this morality into the State, but has only to aid in awakening it there, as a morality already always latent in the State as such. The Church has, roughly, to begin where the State leaves off; and her ethics are of a transcending, abiding, self- oblivious, God-seeking and God-finding order, the whole a gift from the God of Grace, intended to meet, penetrate, raise and satisfy the aspirations infused by Himself into the work of the God of Nature. And these Gods are not two Gods, any more than these men are two creatures; but the same God, once for all the God of Nature and of Grace, sup- ports, stimulates and satisfies man, once for all a creature of sense and time, of spirit and eternity, and does so, for each of these lives and levels, in and through the other. And hence State and Church are both necessary to man's full development in his two levels and calls; they are even variously necessary each to the other. i64 THE GERMAN SOUL The third stage followed, alas, pretty rapidly. We can now trace very closely how, at a particular moment in the struggle between the Popes and the Emperors, certain canon- ists of the specifically Church party ceased to be satisfied with the true balance, — with two complexes, each essentially though differently ethical; and how they now conceived the State as an essentially non-ethical, pre- ethical complex, which (although itself neces- sary to the Church as the Church's physical substratum, support and defender) required the Church's continuous impulsion and regula- tion within the State's own degree and kind of action. Thus we have already seen, in our first study, how the great canonist Sinibaldo de Fieschi, who shortly afterwards (in 1243) became Pope Innocent IV., could teach that the persona of the State is purely ficta ; moral responsibility attaches to individuals and to the Church, I suppose also to families, but not to the State. And we there found that noble Papal pronouncements, such as Leo XIII. 's Immortale Dei of 1885, have, of late years, again proclaimed the rich doctrine of the two great Moral Complexes, and have thus met the quite independent but similar conclusions of great German and English jurists and CATHOLIC POSITION, THIRD STAGE 165 philosophers. But the conception of only one great Moral Complex still possesses, unfortun- ately, a wide impHcit influence, in considerable part derived from the twin facts that Chris- tianity began with a profound abstraction from the earthly State, and that Christianity remains turned, first and foremost, to its heavenly Home. During this great war we have indeed been thrilled by such resonant utterances as those of the Primate of Belgium and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow, and, in other degrees and ways, by declarations of French and English, and one or two Italian Bishops. Nor can any just observer doubt the sensitive soundness of instinct, upon these points, of Roman Catholics generally in France, Belgium and England. Yet such an observer would have also to admit the apparent absence of all check exercised by their religion upon the '^ reahstic " affinities so markedly revealed by the German Roman Catholic clergy gener- ally and by the laity of the great Centre Party. I take it to be beyond question that, the Kulturkampf once settled, the bulk of the Roman Catholics of Germany, although, according to German standards, independent enough in municipal and home-political affairs, i66 THE GERMAN SOUL accepted and even helped on the Chauvinist temper, megalomania and " realism " so pro- minent in their Government's dealings with other countries. The Protestant position, in so far as it persists in a definite doctrine and corporate organisation of its own, continues, in our questions, to be dogged by the great disad- vantages of its origins. Historical research is showing, ever increasingly, how profoundly the original movement (however much occa- sioned, excused, or even justifiable, by long- standing abuses and excesses) was shaped and coloured by the doctrines and temper pre- valent in those times — by Occam's agnostic Nominalism and a predestinarian Rigorism which exaggerated the already hardly practic- able tempers of Saint Paul and Saint Augus- tine. What the Catholic second stage had so nobly perceived was thus lost again; the categories of Nature and Supernature (which does not destroy but perfects Nature) were dethroned from their primacy, in favour of the categories of Sin and Redemption, with mostly a jealous exclusion of the very idea of PROTESTANTS DENY POLARITY 167 a double level and polarity within man's goodness itself. Man can thus be bad or he can be good; and his life on earth is essen- tially a conflict between this good and bad. But man is not substantially good in a certain kind, and called to a slow trans- formation by and into a still higher kind of good. True, the most characteristically German, and the most loved by German Protestants, amongst the Protestant Reformers, Luther, is the least systematic amongst them in this acute rigorism and dualism. Much of the CathoHc mystical depth and tenderness, and not a little of the sacramental sense, still persist in this astonishingly manifold genius. Yet it is also unfortunately true that, precisely in our matters, Luther is not more, he is greatly less, satisfactory than Calvin, who, so much wider in his influence in Europe at large and in America, coloured so much less of German hfe. For that most unhappy racial arrogance of tone towards non-Germans, which Luther so largely himself introduced, and so largely fostered — that temper of superiority and contempt with which the German was encouraged by the Saxon miner's son, largely because of the new religion itself, i68 THE GERMAN SOUL to look down upon the Latin races — this was necessarily absent from the temper of Calvin, the middle-class Frenchman of humanist training. And again the most distressing coarseness, brutality and recklessness of temper and advice, which so gravely dis- figured and limited the finer gifts and capaci- ties of the ardent, self-communicative Luther, were conspicuously absent from the life and teaching of the cold and relentless, but always self-contained and deliberate Calvin. Luther's Pecca fortiter answer to Philip of Saxony's case of conscience; his inflammatory instiga- tion to revolt of the poor German serf pea- santry, and then, when their revolt came, his adjuration to the German Protestant princes to " brain them, as so many mad dogs " ; and his sermon, to an ordinary church congrega- tion, in the fulness of his experience and authority, as to the man's universal and absolute right to the satisfaction of his sex instinct — say, with his maidservant, if only he has first solicited his wife and she has refused him three times: these are but specimens of a brutality which, alas, has (upon the whole) only helped still further to endear Luther to a large section even of the educated German public, and greatly to LUTHER'S BRUTAL IMPULSIONS 169 encourage the corresponding impulsions within their own natures. Thus at the Luther centen- ary celebration in 1888, perhaps the most tumultuously applauded of the tableaux of his life was the one which showed Catherine of Bora, still in Nun's costume, being fondled on the knees of Luther, still himself in the Augustinian habit — surely, an unlovely form under which to insist upon the doctrine of a sole kind and stage of goodness. And, as regards cruelty towards subject classes or races, not a decade ago, at a centenary cele- bration connected with the town and uni- versity of Heidelberg, one of the scenes enacted, which symbolised German colonial rule, began with German colonial officials in tropical costumes bastinadoing their native subjects, and ended with these same officials stringing up on trees these same coloured men. And the vein of impulsive brutality in Luther coexists alongside of a central current of an astonishingly subtle, indeed strainingly doctrinaire, character. He must and will attain to absolute certainty of his own salva- tion, as a fact fully achieved already here and now; and absolute certainty he attains by and within an act of the purest abstractive thought — of sheer faith in the redemptive 170 THE GERMAN SOUL act of Christ alone, and in the all-sufficiency of that act. Good works must and do follow from this faith; yet it is the faith, not the works, which alone is necessary. The visible, sensible, institutional, is for Luther (when in this, his most characteristic vein) not right save as an expression of such a purely spiritual, indeed intensely abstract, conviction. Only the word of Scripture, taken in by your own eyes, is an exception; indeed, as to that book and these eyes, Luther repeatedly declares that souls have been lost because they could not read. But otherwise nothing sensible can help towards the spiritual. The crucifix may be retained as expressing faith, it may not be used to awaken faith. I may kiss my child because I love it; I may not kiss it in order to love it, or with any belief that kissing it will awaken or strengthen my love: the devo- tional equivalents of these latter acts and be- liefs are " superstition," " magic," " foreign," even " Babylonish." Thus the bridge between sense and spirit, demonstrably intended for traffic in both directions, is to be used only in the direction from spirit to sense. Undoubtedly Luther, in these doctrinaire subtleties, was, in great part, moved by the thirst of all deeper religion, and especially as LUTHER'S SEPARATIST SUBTLETY 171 he found it in Saint Paul and Saint Augustine, after the simply given and prevenient character of Grace, and our utter need of it. Yet the angry contempt with which he refused to find any equivalent to his own strivings in the average Catholic principles and practice, during well-nigh fifteen centuries before his sheer and complete rediscovery of these truths, and his quite arbitrary aloofness, when in this vein, from one of the two essentially inter- related movements between sense and spirit, remain potent stimulants to the similar congenital weaknesses of Germans generally, down to this very moment. These prejudices still fully possessed my tutor's outlook; they still strongly influence the powerful and warmly Christian canonist Professor Rudolf Sohm; they greatly limit the insight of a philosopher, otherwise so free from all dog- matic scruples as Professor Eucken; they tax all the strength and vigilance, in such perception of their erroneousness as he has reached, of so virile and amazingly rich a mind and soul as Professor Troeltsch. Indeed wheresoever these influences do exercise their sway, they necessarily feed a separatist atti- tude towards the great bulk of other times, other races, other churches, of a kind more 172 THE GERMAN SOUL subtle and difficult of detection and cor- rection than was Calvinism in its frankly iconoclastic and consistently contemptuous springtide. 3 The Idealist position has now, for some seventy years, been so little prominent in Germany that it is difficult clearly to gauge its present range and influence. Yet the instinct of the arch-" realist " Napoleon, when, especially in relation to Fichte, he expressed his dread, thinly veiled by contempt, of the German " ideologues," was utterly right in its perception of the terrific force imparted to the German character by such " mere theorisings." Indeed it is this position that, more than any other, reveals the deepest idiosyncrasies, strengths, weaknesses and dangers of the German soul. I propose here to ignore Kant and Schelling: Kant, because of the very traceable influence of his Scotch Calvinist descent on his father's side, and because, as the earliest clear exponent of a scheme for a permanent peace, he is, in his strong Moralism and prevalent Deism (rather than Theism), less characteristic of what we are here seeking; and SchelHng because, after IDEALISTS: FICHTE'S REDEN 173 passing through almost every possible phase, he ended definitely friendly to Church institu- tions of a hardly Protestant type. Schleier- macher also, for other reasons, is less helpful. I will here only consider certain features of Fichte, in his Reden an die deutsche Nation, 1808, and three peculiarities of Hegel; and this although I deeply admire the German revolt against Napoleon and the steely purity and strength of Fichte's central intention and will, and again the wide stretches of magnifi- cently rich, penetrating insight we owe to Hegel, especially in his Phenomenology of the Human Spirit and his Philosophy of Right, As to Fichte, here are two groups of sayings — ^the first, as to the new education he would graft upon Pestalozzi's scheme; the second, as to the ultimate cause of the essential superiority, clear to his own mind, of the races of Germanic speech to all other West-European peoples. They will illustrate, even without comment, the main contentions of this study. " The new education must itself produce with necessity the necessity that it intends " ; " it is primarily the sure, deliberate art of producing in man an infallibly good will *' {fVerke, vii. 282). " This education never has 174 THE GERMAN SOUL to do with any self-seeking, because it suffo- cates the root of all such self-seeking, obscure feeling, by clear thinking." " The man thus educated is impelled by a love which, in no degree whatsoever, turns to any satisfaction of the senses, but to activity of the spirit, for the sake of the activity, and to the law of this activity, for the sake of the law " {Ibid, vii. 291, 307). " Such a creative love pre-supposes, in the person to be seized by it, a capacity for producing, out of his own activity, pictures independent of already extant reality — ^in no wise copies and successors, but patterns and precursors." Hence Pestalozzi is held " to instigate the child's mind to the projection of pictures, and to allow it to learn, whatsoever it learns at all, only by such free creation " and projection; for "he cannot mean by contemplation (Anschauung) that blind hand- ling of, and fumbling around, objects of sense called perception (JV ahrnehmung) " (vii. 284, 404). And indeed, even " to attain a secure conception " as to the true aim of Pestalozzi's scheme " we must refuse to inspect any part of the actual execution; since from such a clear conception of his aim " as we have here attained " there springs (directly) the further concept of the execution and its necessary FICHTE'S INTENSE CHAUVINISM 175 consequences, without any of your empirical experimentations " (vii. 402). And as to the prerogative of the Germanic peoples that retain Germanic speech, we learn that the whole of modern central and western Europe has been formed by the Teutonic races — those that have retained their original seats and language (Germans, Scandinavians), and those that migrated into ancient Roman territory and there adopted some Latin tongue (French, Itahans, Spaniards : Fichte does not mention the English). But it is the former alone that thus possess an instrument which is the spontaneous product, and the adequate awakener and expression, of their true selves ; whereas the latter nations are irretrievably doomed (as regards their own selves) to remain on the surface of things and of them- selves, and (as regards Germans and Scandina- vians and mankind at large) never to be more than useful incentives to the German's true penetration of such subjects and of himself, — a penetration which he can then hand on to the world at large, but not to those neo-Latin countries (vii. 311-377). For "between life and death there is no comparison; and hence all direct comparisons between the German and the neo-Latin languages are utterly 176 THE GERMAN SOUL futile." Besides, " a German who learns Latin more thoroughly than does the foreigner (a thing he may well achieve), thereby attains to a far more thorough understanding of the neo-Latin language than is possessed by this foreigner who speaks it; and thus the German, if he but uses all his advantages, can under- stand this foreigner even better than the latter can understand himself." Again, " only the German truly possesses a people of his own; only he is capable of specific, rational love for his nation." In a word, " all who either themselves truly live by a creative production of the new; or who at least stand attentive as to whether the current of an original life may not, somewhere or other, seize them also; or who at all events have some foreboding of, and do not hate, it: all these are original human beings; they are (if contemplated as a people) an original people, the people, Germans. All those who resign themselves to be something only secondary and derivative, and who clearly know themselves to be such, are so in reality, and become so always increasingly, because of this their belief; they are but an appendix to life, an echo of an already silent voice; they are (contemplated as a people) outside of the FICHTE'S TREND VERY GERMAN 177 original people, the Germans, and, for the latter, strangers and aliens " (vii. 374). Fichte finds that Germans are without native words possessing the same connotations as " the three infamous neo-Latin words ' humanity,' * popularity,' ' Hberality,' " and this, because Germans are too original and sincere for such clap-trap. But " character has no particular German name, precisely because, without any knowledge or reflection of our own, character is expected to proceed directly from our very being " — " to possess character and to be German are, without doubt, synony- mous " (vii. 321, 446). It would be wrong to quote these things here as though many a German had not, ever since they were produced, smiled at or pro- tested against them. Yet they are, alas, sadly instructive as to the national weaknesses. Just think one moment. Here is one of the chief German philosophers in the full maturity of his powers, teaching equivalently, through- out a long course of pubhc lectures, that Dante was hopelessly debarred from finding the depths of his own soul, and that the deathless Divina Commedia seriously profited mankind only as a stimulus to Klopstock in the com- position of his still-born Messias ! 178 THE GERMAN SOUL As to Hegel I would only point out how curiously few have been the students, German or even English, who have at all vividly realised how serious are the incentives to man's self-inflation contained in three pro- minent characteristics of his thought, and especially how closely interconnected are these points within his teaching. Indeed, his doc- trine that matter is simply a secondary creation of the human mind — ^its leavings, so to say: this is even often supposed greatly to help religion to be spiritual. His utter insen- sibility to the overwhelming probability of the existence of other finite intelligences which, not human, are far more intelligent than man: this is held to eliminate superstition. And the more characteristic of his two ultimate trends, in which he holds no God distinct from the world (all reality consisting of but one and the same mind in process of variously slow 01 rapid, easy or difficult, evolution), is softened down into some would-be compatibiHty with genuinely Christian mysticism. And yet these three doctrines are closely interconnected and are all equally characteristic of Hegel; and they all help to leave his disciple in a universe empty of all realities really distinct from the one single mind as to which he him- HEGEL'S THREE EXCESSES 179 self is not only an ever integral part, but of which he, qua man, is always the supreme flower and expression throughout all space and time. Self-reverence can indeed exist here, but no adoration, no creaturely temper, no articulate humility, no anticipation and utiHsation of the body's claims and stimula- tions. If, along many noble stretches, Hegel- ianism has expressed and helped the German at his best, it has also, on these crucial points, for the most part projected and strengthened his native weaknesses — his inclinations to excess. 4 But it is MateriaHsm, if we take the word in the broadest of its unfavourable senses, that, on the surface at least, appears interiorly to have sapped, or utterly to have swept away, by far the greater part of the three idealisms hitherto considered, — even of the ground which these have in common. And indeed I believe it undeniable that it has been the influence of Materialism which has, more directly and massively than the weak- nesses of all the three above groups even taken together, deflected and changed the German soul. This influence can perhaps best be traced i8o THE GERMAN SOUL if we discriminate between four successive waves or stages — all this well within the last three or four generations. There was first the invasion, from America rather than England, of an intense Industrial- ism, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, turning the population ever increasingly from agriculture and patriarchal village-life, or moderate, local trades-work within and for the town guilds, to great mining, factory, commercial enterprises and to a large prole- tariat existence in certain hugely swollen centres of relentless, feverish labour and competition. It is in 1812 that the Romanti- cist Ludwig Tieck, then a young man, in the Introduction to his Phantasus, utters his disgust against " the almost fantastic enthu- siasm " with which the teacher of one of his companions welcomes " all that is useful, new, factory-like," " as in Fiirth " (in contrast with its senior and neighbour, the patriarchal Niirnberg) — Fiirth " with its mirror-polishings, button-makings, and all the other noisy trades — ^a North America " transplanted into Germany. All this in contrast with a warm admiration for " the strong Englishmen " (pp. 8, 9, 13). It is not Luther who can be blamed for MATERIALISM, FIRST INVASION i8i any share, even an unconscious one, in the preparation or stimulation of this particular excess. But Puritanism, with its reaction against the three monastic vows and yet with an asceticism of its own, peculiar in kind and degree — Calvin's and WilHam Penn's sub- stitute for the monastic vows — ^was (as a matter of fact, not of intention) the training- school, for some twelve or more generations, chiefly in America, of an activity unnatural in the intensity of its concentration upon matters largely of little or no intrinsic attrac- tion or educative worth. The monastic movement had assuredly been profoundly right in its ideal, and in its practice when the movement was at its best, of holding aloft, incarnate before the world, the practice of self-renouncement, as an essential element of Christianity, indeed of all fully alive religion, and even of all serious and fruitful human living. But, in the actual working of this ideal by and amongst frail men, certain grave abuses had doubtlessly arisen. Never- theless I believe that the history of the world since those times is proving the Protestant Reformation to have been an excessive revolu- tion, in its attempt to abolish monasticism, root and branch. However, Calvin and Penn 1 82 THE GERMAN SOUL (contrasting very favourably, in this respect, with a large portion of our more recent West European and American trend) retained too vivid a sense of the abiding place of some kind and degree of asceticism amongst the essential constituents of all virile religion, not to feel that the mere abolition of the three monastic vows and of an externally distinct class of men, devoted especially to the self-renuncia- tory element, was insufficient. They had to discover a substitute for that monastic Hfe generally, and one that could be adopted by all men — but what was this substitute to be ? Their rigorism condemned pretty well all art and philosophy, the social and sensuous amenities and relaxations of life, — ^in the case of the Quakers, also every military activity: all this was too dangerous for inclusion, within any and every Christian's life, even as simply so much raw material and occasion of self- discipHne for and by the Christian soul. The asceticism, then, could not here consist in any moderating of, or in any dividing up amongst mankind of the attention to, these intrinsically unassimilable things. The monk had gone at the one end of the scale; the maypole had to go at the other. Indeed how retain ends of a scale at all, if the very notion of a scale, with PURITANS AND MATERIALISM 183 its steps and stages, is all wrong ? Yet the need and the will for activity of some kind had not been killed amongst these rigorists, it had indeed been immensely steeled and stimulated (for and within certain narrow limits) by the very intensity and concentration of their rigoristic creed. One great field for action (alongside of administrative and governmental interests) here alone remained open to the zealous soul — the practice of determined con- centration upon the virtues of industry and honesty, as exercised and developed in trade, business, money-making. Besides, such acti- vity turned out the most sure of the means towards the acquisition of the money neces- sary for the spreading and the flourishing of this conviction and mode of life. And long after the originally religious motive and restraints had relaxed, their effects remained, in a human will fashioned in the mode necessary for the prevalence of the type of business man who will, for half a century, starve out seven-tenths of his nature, with a view to making quite unneeded money in the most mechanical of ways. The results of such excessive concentration and produc- tion are, sooner or later, huge, soul-destroying 7 rusts y immense national rivalries, and appal- i84 THE GERMAN SOUL ling bloody wars largely occasioned by the existence and ever-growing needs of such insatiable machines. If the Neapolitan Laz- zarone is a human monstrosity and no neces- sity, also the over-busy business man is, as truly, both these things. Nor should the case of the Jews be adduced in refutation. For if the Jews have not been steeled and narrowed by Puritanism, yet they have passed through two millenniums of circumstances even stranger and stronger as so many forces of deflection from the natural course of development. The violent, and (later on) the apparently permanent, uprooting from their own land and from all agriculture, the dispersion amongst intensely unfriendly alien peoples, and the mostly severe exclusion from all the profes- sions regarded (at the time) as the more regular and liberal — all this could not, and did not, fail to produce a type of mankind con- centrated, beyond the instincts and needs of normal human nature, upon the few activities which, for so long, were alone left open to this race, so wonderful withal in its deathless tenacity and vigour. But as to Germany, there was the second invasion, — the advance by leaps and bounds of Mathematico-physical Science in its direct, MATERIALISM, SECOND INVASION 185 triumphantly successful application to human physical comfort, and with the all but inevit- able weakening of the sense, which alone ensures the soul's nobility, as to the true (the ever secondary and ministerial) place of all such things. A pedantic barbarism was (in Germany as more or less in other countries also) the necessary result, a coarsening of man's feeling, thinking and theory — " philo- sophical " MateriaHsm, Naturalism, Monism became the vogue. And this vogue, still so powerful everywhere, arises undoubtedly in part on occasion of noble discoveries and of the labours of men far more cautious and spiritual than their mostly noisy and reckless popularisers ; and again, also, as a reaction against, or as a relentless application of, various excesses or weaknesses of the Idealist philosophy. It was in 1854, ^^ ^^^ Naturalists' Congress in Gottingen, that passionate de- bates on Materialism showed how largely it then held the attention and imagination of the pubHc. Vogt, Moleschott, Biichner were intensely active in this direction. And as late as 1872 D. F. Strauss could, in his last book, The Old and the New Faith^ declare himself a MateriaHst. Since 1859 ^^^ Darwin's Origin of Species, Evolution had been especially i86 THE GERMAN SOUL pressed by Germans into the service of a variously aggressive Monism of a preponder- antly materialistic kind — so especially by Ernst Haeckel, whose World-Riddle (1899) was at its 240th thousand, in the German original alone, in 1908. There was the third invasion, — the danger- ously rapid, complete and immense success of the Bismarckian poHcy, in its three closely interconnected wars of 1864, 1866, 1870. The great influx of gold from France came as the third on top of those other two waves of Materialism; and it came, not indeed without great previous sacrifices and virtues of the German people at large, yet still planned (to the last detail), not by themselves or by men of liberal sympathies, but by a genius scornful of all truly constitutional government, of small nationalities, of all moral scruples that stood in the way, not simply of the exist- ence or slow growth, but of the violent political consoHdation and the physical predomin- ance, of Germany. Bismarck himself was too observant a mind not to fear the full triumph now before us of Junker militarism and Colonial megalomania. If International Morality consists in scrupulosity as to the means and in self-limitation as to the ends, MATERIALISM, LAST INVASIONS 187 then Bismarck, in the latter respect, must be accounted a moral statesman. His successors, as Prince Bulow's Imperial Germany shows so vividly, have continued Bismarck's means but have, mostly quite deliberately, dropped his ends. The fourth and present invasion is precisely this Pan-Germanism and " The State is Force " doctrine, which the AUies are up in arms against, and which has been fed, for half a century, upon most of the finer, most even of the finest, needs and qualities of the German character. It is plain from all this how greatly the rest of Europe, and indeed America too in an especial degree, shares the responsibility for the first two invasions of Materialism here indicated. Monsieur le Play, that remarkable French observer in his very careful books upon the working-men of Europe and upon the social reforms he considered urgent, found, in 1 864-1 878, the agricultural and family system to be almost everywhere undermined, and the reforms to be chiefly necessary in France. And the most influential preachers, throughout Europe generally, of man's sacred, i88 THE GERMAN SOUL primary right to ever increasing creature* comfort were, not Germans, but the EngHsh- men Bentham and Herbert Spencer. These movements doubtless possessed their element of truth and usefulness, at and for their times. But now, for some thirty years at least, the finer minds and outlooks have everywhere been recovering a hearing against the Phihs- tinism that, assuredly, lurks very plentifully in those positions. As to the Bismarckian wars, we in England now see clearly how deplorable was our non- intervention in 1864, when we ought to have succoured Denmark in her straits. A final point. Germany is now so formidable a foe, and one that so profoundly requires defeating, not directly because a false doctrine peculiar to herself possesses her, with only as much devotion given to her conviction as the Allies would give to any conviction of theirs; but because a spirit of sheer money-making and boundless commerciaHsm, which more or less penetrates and vulgarises us all, and which we ourselves rather than they began, has, in the German, found a lodging within an incredibly vehement and concentrated, sys- tematic and visionary soul. AVOID GERMANIST INFECTION 189 IV The things that we ourselves should not do, and the points, in the now dominant outlook of the German soul, at which we can and should act and where we can hope for a change or development, appear to be, respectively, two and four. There are, assuredly, two very contrary things, which, as all extremes, pretty easily call forth and supplant each other, that we must avoid, if we would not, whilst damaging our own minds and characters, still further complicate the future difficulty of awakening Germany to her own best state of soul. (I) We must not ourselves become infected by, and envious of, the very spirit and method which we deplore in the Germans. This warning is, very certainly, not superfluous. Let us, indeed, work for better organisation — of our own best kind; for a permanent national home defence on the Swiss model; for greater concentration in our school and 190 THE GERMAN SOUL university education; and for many another development and improvement of which the first idea and impulsion may well come to us from Germany, and from this war with the Central Empires. Yet all such movements will have to be carefully assimilated to, and integrated within, our own special past his- tory and special persistent psychic capability, these things taken of course at their best and as capable of considerable modification. This rule is assuredly not observed by such a writer as the late Professor J. A. Cramb, in his much circulated book Germany and Eng- land, of 1 9 14. The vivid, generous-minded sketches, especially that of Treitschke, there given, are indeed most useful helps towards our understanding the war mentality of pre- sent-day Germany; and no doubt it is this descriptive side of the book that won it the high praise of Lord Roberts, whose own mentality was assuredly not that shown by the background, the ultimate admirations of the writer. For Cramb is, at bottom, himself too much impressed and influenced by that very outlook not to long that things and dis- positions might come about amongst ourselves, which would be in place only within a Caesarist democracy. After all, even our own Cromwell ESCAPE SHEER ANTI-GERMANISM 191 requires to be received with a decided mixture of praise and of blame. And a resuscitation of the worship of the One Man and of Force, so intemperately preached by Carlyle, is neither what we require, nor what, if we sincerely strove for it, would leave us any adequate reasons, of a larger and abidingly important kind, for our most costly opposition to the now dominant German spirit. (2) And we must not, on the other hand, lump everything German together, as though it were all evil, or, at least, as though mankind at large, and we ourselves, did not require the German contribution, at its best, as truly as the others, the Germans included, require our own contribution to the world's, surely not over-great, stock in the things that must not die. We must escape the thinning down and deterioration of our outlook to any sheer, direct anti-Germanism, and the admittance of ever weak and weakening panic into our souls. The greatness of England has consisted, and we will each of us see to it that it continues to consist, in moderation; equitableness ; pre- supposition of innocence where there are no 192 THE GERMAN SOUL serious reasons, in that particular case, for suspecting the man's guilt; and the absence of all fanaticisms. Hence the impulsions deprecated would be doubly deplorable amongst ourselves. Professor Gilbert Murray speaks most justly, in his delightful contribu- tion to The International Crisis (Oxford, 1915, p. 32), of " the semi-insane suspicions of Prince Louis of Battenberg, of Lord Haldane, and of persons even more exalted." The attempt to secure the declaration that no naturalised British subject could legally be a Privy Councillor suffered from an analo- gous weakness ; whilst the looting of the shops of poor Germans in the East End of London was of course deeply disgusting to all truly responsible persons amongst us. But indeed the country has remained, upon the whole, remarkably free from hatred or wholesale condemnation — those ever weak and weakening states of soul; although this relative equanimity is, of course, no miracle for us who have been spared the occupation of any of our territory by the enemy, such as has be- fallen especially Belgium and Servia, and in parts France and Russia also. Noble fruit has sprung up for us from the best British sowing, watering and pruning in the past. So with EXAMPLES OF ENGLISH SANITY 193 the decision given in favour of the legality of the Privy Councillorships just mentioned; the repeated explicit refusal of the Govern- ment, in Parliament and elsewhere, to take the fact of a man's originally German or Austrian nationality as of itself alone branding him as a suspect person ; the impressive com- pleteness of trust reposed in the whilom enemy Generals Louis Botha and Smuts and the splendid answer to, and success of, this trust; and the mutually generous and collaborative relations between the native Indian rulers and troops and the central British authorities. And, on a smaller scale, and in literary ways, how refreshingly sane and just in their warm patriotism are such utterances as those of the Vice-chancellor of the University of Leeds, Dr. M. E. Sadler, Modern Germany and the Modern Worlds and of Sir James Donaldson, Principal of St. Andrews University — both given forth after the war had lasted a month or two, and the latter the final address to his students of that strong, serene soul. The points, at which we can and should help, or where we can hope for a change or 194 THE GERMAN SOUL development in the now dominant outlook of the German soul, appear to be the following four. I move from the point where we our- selves, the Allies, will have to do pretty well everything, to the deeper and deepest matters where directly we can do nothing except admit and correct our own similar or contrary deviations. (0 The starting-point must be supplied by the failure of Germany in this war, a failure suffi- ciently clear and massive to awaken the majority of the German people to an active, efficacious, persistent dissatisfaction with the militarist Absolutism and feverish Pan- Germanism increasingly dominant during the last three generations. It is Germany's visible, " realistic " preponderance in the world, the reputation of ultimate physical irresistibility, that are now evidently dear above all to the average German; only a very clear, very large failure of these pretensions, as brought to a test in this war, will make him change his mind. And such a failure is difficult for the Allies to obtain against a Government and people bent upon the precisely opposite success, with a length and extensiveness ALLIES MUST WIN DECISIVELY 195 of preparation, and an intensity of con- centrated purpose, probably unmatched in history. Indeed the difficulty here is twofold. Abso- lute Government undoubtedly possesses great advantages for the successful prosecution of war; and the German people has long shown how much it cares for success in war and, almost from time immemorial, how little it dreads Absolutism. On this, the starting- point for change, it is not the Germans them- selves that can be expected to supply the materials for so extensive a modification of their present state of mind. The Allies have either to win very great, quite tangible suc- cesses, or they have so hugely to drain the resources of Germany, as, in either case, to bring the majority of the German people itself to realise that it has lived for a legend or, at least, for something costing more than it is worth. Yet, after all, such consummations are well within the power of achievement by the AUies. Such a concentration upon war as has been effected by Germany, even if now over half a century in operation, cannot be kept up for ever even by Germans; especially since, precisely because of the special temper 196 THE GERMAN SOUL and methods which have made her so formid- able a military machine, she can indeed win over to active alliance such semi-barbarous governments as Turkey and Bulgaria, and can, perhaps, keep dynastically related Greece and Rumania neutral to the end: but she can hardly win or check any one else. And yet not all her present helpers will suffice against the Allies, even if these acquire no further active adherents, provided only that they continue strenuous and united until the clear and crushing defeat or exhaustion of the Central Empires. Thus, and thus alone, can and will German Real-Politik be refuted on its own ground. Here we English can profoundly help Germans to re-find their best selves: all thoughts of any peace stopping short of such clear great victory mean the abandonment of the attempt to furnish the datum and starting-point for Germany's own true regene- ration. Thus none but Germans themselves can take the place, or can directly aid the re-development, of their own true selves; yet only non-Germans, indeed only men for the time arrayed in a bloody war against them, can furnish Germans, as they have now become predominantly, with the kind of facts GERMANS & SELF-GOVERNMENT 197 necessary for any such change in their mental orientation . (2) Perhaps the first point that we can hope to see changed in the Germans by the Germans themselves, will be the awakening of the need for some form and degree of genuine political self-government, so strong as to force the abandonment of the present very real auto- cracy, the repression of the Junker and Pan- Germanic swagger, and either the renunciation of the ambitious colonial policy (a thing so recent, and so profoundly distrusted even by Bismarck all his life) or, at least, the infusion of a new spirit into such large colonisation. Colonisation would then primarily become a means for genuine improvement in the lot of the natives and for the training thereby of young German officials in self-restraint and a wisely sympathetic government of aHen, and more or less barbarous, races. Genuine self- government at home would transform the political parties in the Reichstag, from critics perennially possessing only the power to reject, modify or accept the Budget of the Government, and deprived of what alone is a full cure for doctrinaires — the opportunity of themselves carrying out successfully their 198 THE GERMAN SOUL own ideas — ^into groups ever liable to achieve the responsibility of office. Thus all the chief sections, interests, currents of the body politic would receive a genuinely political education; each would actively contribute to the all- round development and health of the State's rule within; and the State's respect for, and restraint towards, the specific lives of the family, the trade, the municipality would grow more genuine and articulate. Here, with regard to this organic conception of the State as but one, though the most extensive, of the organisms which lie around the individual man, the State which, in its own manner and degree, is itself also a persona non ficta, it is precisely German thinkers (especially the great Otto von Gierke) who have been leading the way, also for us here in England, by much admirable work. And municipal life in Germany has so long a history and so vigorous an activity, that in it, and in the guild, lie ready the concrete preliminaries for the more general, the political, evolution of this organic sense. True, the advance from even the richest, most vividly apprehended, theory to practice, in fields unfamiliar to a people, is usually very difficult; and here the transition, from such limited complexes to NATIONAL CHARACTER CHANGES 199 the supreme, the all-englobing complex of the State, is a change, not simply of degree, but of kind; and it is especially when the average German's practice touches this supreme com- plex that he has ever shown so strange a passivity, indeed an actual liking for being ordered about in a minutely regulated manner, provided only it be mechanically perfect. Yet, after all, national character is, if really limited, limited in ways that cannot be forecast in any detail by even its deepest representa- tives or acutest critics. Thus the Englishman, typified by St. Thomas k Becket and by King Henry VHL, as an Ironside under Crom- well and as a fellow-reveller of the Merry Monarch, as a subject of George II. and such as he is now under George V. — ^what bewilder- ing changes, many of them quite unforesee- able! Nor is the modification of the German, here hoped for, essentially greater than has been the change of the Frenchman, from the dreamer of a domination of Europe under Louis XIV. or Napoleon I. to the sober- minded Frenchman of our time ; or, again, than the change from the German of an outlook largely determined by Goethe, or by Kant, or by Wilhelm von Humboldt, to the German temper which we now deplore. 200 THE GERMAN SOUL (3) But the State, thus conceived as a moral complex in its action inwards — as the environ- ment, stimulator and protector of the other complexes (each different in kind from one another and from it) which it includes — ^has also to be recognised as a moral complex in its dealings with the other complexes (similar to itself in kind) outside itself. That is, there exists, deep within the nature of things them- selves, such a thing as international morality. Here is the point where the problems are especially difficult, and still only dimly, inter- mittently recognised and practised by us all. It is here also that the official German spirit has, for these last seventy years, been especi- ally faulty and deleterious. The intrinsic difficulties appear here to be threefold. Every man, group, institution that claims to act and to be treated morally is, as regards the apparent consistency and honesty of his position, at a necessary disad- vantage when contrasted with men, groups, institutions that disavow any such pretensions. No human beings or groups do, or can, always live up to even their most sober and sacred convictions; hence the less they put up a GERMANS AND STATE MORALITY 201 standard of living, the less their actual life will be chargeable with empty rhetoric or wily hypocrisy. Thus an acutely observant Roman Catholic cleric told me how impressive had been a Mussulman's vibratingly sincere plea to him for polygamy, as alone truly manly and straightforward — that it alone frankly legalises what amongst monogamous peoples is also well known to be part of the unalterable nature of things, the very frequent poly- gamous practice being there hypocritically covered over with fine monogamous theories and empty, sickening rhetoric. Then again even some of the moral obligations of the individual, such as " thou shalt not steal," " thou shalt speak the truth," incur suspen- sion where, say, a man dying of hunger carries off an unpaid-for loaf; or where a man, to save the Hfe of an innocent fellow-creature, mis- directs the pursuers. And at least equally great analogous exceptions have to be granted in the moral life and duties of the state. And lastly, there is the quite specific, as yet hardly elaborated, difference within similarity, that the relations between state and state cannot indeed, in the long run, be treated as intrinsi- cally non-moral, yet that their morality differs from the morahty of the relations between 202 THE GERMAN SOUL man and man. For the State's existence and action is, not the parallel or response to the individual man's existence and action, but the presupposition and medium of this in- dividual man's wholesome action and secure existence. Yet, as with the individual so with the State, we have, not to run away from or succumb to difficulties, but partly to resolve, partly to bear them, as intrinsic to the task of man- kind. The first obstacle must be met by a frank admission of the universaHty of the fact that a man's practice always lags be- hind his conviction, and that the more ade- quate his conviction the more prolific in ever new problems it will be; and by a persistent demonstration how futile the use of this fact is as against the admission of moral concepts here or anywhere else. The second objection probably finds its best answer in a constant distinction between Ethics and Casuistry, and by the practice of a maximum of Ethics and a minimum of Casuistry, — cleaving the exceptions to be met, in what then will always be felt to be more or less rare or unique occasions, by a moral sense ren- dered simple and straight precisely by the long preceding periods of its exercise and LIFE TEACHES STATE MORALITY 203 application in what are recognised as the nor- mal circumstances. And any efficient answer to the third difficulty can make headway only if and after, and never before, we have recognised the State as essentially moral, as (after all) the creation, however spontaneous and necessary, of human beings, who begin to be, and who remain, human only so long as they possess, in any and all of their functions and formations, some interior strivmg, con- ffict, groping, ideal, all of an ever incomplete kind, never more than partially practised, yet none the less truly moral. The first stage of this study will have shown how differently, yet everywhere really, diffi- cult is any such full and persistent recognition of the essentially moral character of the State, within each of the four large German groups there considered. Yet Hfe, the great teacher, is subtly yet unconquerably against all these groups, in so far as they will ignore or deny, in word or in deed, the ethical nature of the State. This war will itself teach us all very much on this point : it will refute all hanker- ings after " the splendid isolation " of Eng- land and, especially, the now official German doctrine that the State is based upon force (not will); that, in relation to other states, 204 THE GERMAN SOUL it has solely to consider its own physical aggrandisement and superiority (instead of, first, its own existence); and that it needs no trust, no friendship, from other states but their fear alone (instead of their respect based both upon its honesty and its force). No such " pure " teachings correspond to real human Hfe, ever essentially " mixed," and ever (slowly and inconsistently yet truly) growing in the depth and range of its standards even more than in the consistency of its practice. The long competition between polygamy and monogamy, of slavery and freedom and the like, shows plainly how impracticable and sentimental appeared, for tens of centuries, the men who, in such other matters, stood where now stand the promoters of Hague Conferences. Those men and these men appeared and appear thus to such others, because the latter are too much obsessed by brute force and the immediate effects of blind battle, primarily within and for the complex of the State and the function of war, to perceive and to foster the eventually all- conquering power of the elastic, subtle growths of the deeper Hfe itself, and its variously large, yet everywhere real, presence and operation. MAN ESSENTIALLY AMPHIBIOUS 205 (4) Yet the last change is the most clamorous for us all; and here especially we can see how strongly the first two groups are working, in Germany itself, to stimulate and incorporate the most ultimate and ineradicable need of man as he remains persistently throughout time and space. The fact is that, now less than ever, can man be made into something not essentially amphibious. True, he has his earthly life, with its predominantly physical requirements and individual self-seeking; he finds himself, from the first, environed and moulded by the complexes, largely one within the other, of his family, his trade, his state; he even discovers, and (in practice) is largely determined by, the fact that his own state (and he himself with it) depends extensively upon the existence, the rivalry, the trust and the friendship of other states. Yet all this, indefinitely improvable though it all be, does not, in the long run, suffice him: sooner or later he finds himself solicited by " another state " or condition, " a new rule "; he gets a glimpse of what has variously impelled him all along. The supernatural life, in a word, is as real a fact as is the natural life. My dog 2o6 THE GERMAN SOUL requires his fellow-dogs, but he also requires me, once he has experienced human society. And I myself require my fellow-men, but I also require God and intercourse with Him, as the great realities revealed to me at work within my life, by religion. Now here there are two difficulties, special (in the intensity of their degree) to the German soul. It is clear at once that the feverish race for wealth and material power, prevalent especially in Germany, yet also in America and England during these last three genera- tions, inevitably deadens the soul to its own deepest intimations. But then this obsession of the soul by, say, one tenth — and the least fruitful, least final tenth — of a fully awake soul's interests, is too near to mania to last permanently anywhere; it is no more satisfy- ing than is the opposite, the do-nothing existence. And especially the artisan classes, in Germany as elsewhere, already show clear signs of a fuller awakening to these deepest of man's interests; and this will powerfully aid the classes above and below them in their turn more fully to regain or to discover the same, their own greatest, needs. But it is surely also clear how powerful in our times are the solicita- tions that tend to deflect, or to arrest, the GERMAN RELIGIOUS HINDRANCES 207 genuine development of any such movement, and to make it rest, not in Historical Religion, taken as a truthful witness to more than human reality — a real God, a real soul, a real life of each in the other, begun here and completed beyond the grave — but in some form of pure Immanence — or, at most, in some variety of Fichteism — belief in the more than human, quite ultimate, reahty of certain laws of the ethical life. This danger, assuredly real even in England, is trebly real in Germany for reasons presumably obvious to us now. Our best hopes for Germany here lie, I believe, in three directions. The Churches, and in particular the great Roman Catholic Church, are not played out. Especially if, and when, they fully wake up to the moral character of the State also in its international dealings, will they be driven back upon their primary domain and function, the witness to what Hes beyond, what ulti- mately requires, and is required by, even the widest of such natural complexes and outlooks — seas of Nature surrounded by the ocean of Supernature. Roman Catholicism, even in Germany, cannot permanently become Chau- vinistic; and, by its fuller recognition of the 208 THE GERMAN SOUL State as the specific organ of natural morality, it will stimulate both the State to this morality and itself, the Church, to its own supernatural ethics. Philosophy is not played out. Assuredly it cannot be dictated to by any theology or Church. But religion, where it exists suffi- ciently massive and sincere, can both sober and stimulate philosophy to an ever greater sensitiveness towards the specific facts of religion and towards philosophy's own stan- dards and end. And thus imperfect philo- sophies can be replaced by philosophies more adequate as theories of the actual realities of life which, after all, are the sole true data of philosophy. Thus Hegel rightly supplanted Kant in the question of the Good Will as never simply a form but as always also related to other already extant realities and goods. And in its conception of the State, Hegelianism wanted little more than the corrections intro- duced by the English Hegelians to be of a grand adequacy. But Hegel himself, indeed the entire Idealist succession, is (as regards the theory of knowledge and the philosophy of religion) now, after the dreary reaction of MateriaUsm, such as that of the later Feuer- bach and of Haeckel, in process of supplanta- GERMAN RELIGIOUS HOPES 209 tion by a sober critical Realism, represented by such men as Dr. Frischeisen-Kohler and Professors Windelband and Kiilpe. Professor Troeltsch too can be assigned his place here, at least as regards a keen sense of the inade- quacies of Kant and Hegel in face of the central facts of religion. Philosophies that leave no room for Prayer, Adoration, Sin, Forgiveness, Redemption, may be excellent in many other directions, and also ^s criticisms and stimulants of religious thought; but, as would-be adequate theories of religion, they cannot fail more or less to misconceive and to explain away facts of inexhaustible vitality. And the artisan classes, hitherto the strong- hold of a largely materialistic Socialism, are not played out, as future centres and vehicles of truly religious apprehension. In England symptoms of the awakening of the religious sense within these classes are increasing; and as to Germany, we have the conviction of so well-informed and cautious an observer as Professor Troeltsch that the greater part of the German Socialist movement will, not long hence, seek spiritual shelter and sustenance in some such small Christian communities as the Herrnhuters or the Moravian Brethren. 210 THE GERMAN SOUL Let me conclude with a renewed insistence upon vision, as profoundly congenial to, and immensely powerful within, the German soul. The point is important, for it is plain that men can escape the evils of a false theory, either by attaining to distrust of all theories, or by the substitution of a more adequate theory for that false one. Were Englishmen ever capable of such obsession by a false theory, they would assuredly be cured in the first way, not the second. But Germans, I submit, will have to be cured, doubtless, they also, on occasion of certain facts new to themselves, yet sub- stantially by means of a new, wider, more adequate and more nobly German, vision of their own. Paul Heyse in one of his stories (always so exquisite in form yet mostly so frivolous in moral temper) presents an occur- rence as real, which I take to be typical of the manner in which Germans — the shock from outside having been given them — will alone fully recover their own souls. A young married woman of Cologne longs to bear a child so spiritually fair that men's mere sight of it shall perennially win them to the love of the Invisible ; yet how to help on this consumma- tion she has no idea at all. But daily, in shine and shower, she prays before an altar in the THE LARGER GERMAN VISION 211 great cathedral, and looks up in rapt absorp- tion at an angel's countenance, gazing serenely- down upon her from out of the stained-glass window above. She prays thus, ever longing, absorbed and wondering, from spring to winter. And in the physical winter she experi- ences a deep spiritual spring : for she now bears a daughter; and behold — the angel face. And this daughter, henceforward to the end, wins men to the upward life by her very look — more by what she is than by any single act she does. Somewhat thus, I submit, will Germany reform her soul and its acts, not directly by self-criticism or by the dropping of all dreams, good or bad; but by absorption in another, a nobler and more adequate, vision, by one truly expressive of her own noblest self. She will perceive the German race and state as indeed a permanently essen- tial, most important, constituent of mankind; yet this on condition that, whilst respecting these her own self-expressions, she also respects and nourishes the other different complexes within her own borders; that she recognises this German state and race as but one amongst many others, all variously necessary to each other ; and, above all, that she vividly appre- hends the spiritual, eternal, other-world life 212 THE GERMAN SOUL as the moderator, here already, of her ever proximate tendency to vehemence and excess. Such a procedure will be very un-English, but it will be thoroughly characteristic of, it will but resume, the noblest traditions and teach- ings with which the human race at large has been stimulated and supplied by that essen- tially rich and large, but of late " heady " and hardened, spirit — the German Soul. INDEX A n asterisk indicates pages devoted to direct quotaHons or discussions. Acts of the Apostles, the, on ■- War, 41, 42 Allies, the, where they can help to produce, and where they can hope to see, changes in now dominant German outlook, * 194-207 America, its theory and its practice as to natural equal- ity of all races, 100, loi; intense Industrialism of, its invasion of Germany, 180, 187; the chief Puritan training-school towards In- dustrialism, 18 1 -184; its share of responsibility for European Materialism, 187, 188; England's regret for her attempted coercion of her colonies in, 167, 168 Amphibious character essen- tial toman, 115, 205 Andreae, Johannes, the canon- ist, on the State as a Persona Ficta, 46 Anti-Germanism, direct, to be avoided, 191 -193 Antonine, the, Roman Em- perors, 17 Apostolic Christian times, their attitude towards State and War, 41-43 Aquinas, 45, 161; see Thomas Aquinas, St. Artisan classes, the, their awakening to spiritual life, 206, 309 Assyrian State and the Jewish nation, 95, 102 Augustine, St., endorses Cicero's definition of the State, 43, 44; his leading religious categories. Sin and Redemption, 161, 166; and Givenness of religion, 171 Author, the, racial antece- dents and affinities of, ♦121-125; his articles on Professor E. Troeltsch's religious works, 12, 13 Babylonian State and Jewish nation, 102 Battenberg, Prince Louis of, 192 Becket, St. Thomas, igg Belloc, Hilaire, his definition of War, 47, 48 Bentham, Jeremy, teaches man's sacred right to ever- increasing creature-com- forts, 187, 18S Bernhardi, General von, 96 Bevan, Edwyn, 14 Bickell, Rev. Dr. Gustav, 124 Bismarck, Prince Otto von, his statesmanship moral according to Professor Troeltsch, 91, 92; a moral statesman, not in his means but in his ends, 186, 187; his Memoirs contrasted with Prince Bulow's book. 119; holds German race to 213 214 THE GERMAN SOUL be non-political, 139; dis- trusts ambitious colonial policy, for Germany, all his life, 197; and the Kultur- kampf, 141 Bitterness, German, against England, its double root, *I43-I45 Bosanquet, Prof. Bernard, The Philosophical Theory of the State, 19 10, 12 Botha, General Louis, 193 Boutroux, Emile, his articles on the War, 1 1 Biichner, Louis, 185 Bulgaria, 196 Bulow, Prince Bernhard von, his Imperial Germany con- trasted with Prince Bis- marck's Memoirs, 119, 187; on Germans as a non-politi- cal race, 139; Lord Cromer on the book, *8i, 82 Burkitt, Professor F. C, 14 Calvin, John, his great superi- ority to Luther, in concep- tion of the State, 167, 168; helps on, with Puritanism generally, conditions neces- sary for excessive Indus- trialism, * 1 80- 1 84 Capitalism and the teaching of Jesus, according to Nau- mann, 51,52; and the Puri- tans, * 1 80- 1 84; the Jews, 184; the Franco- German War, 1870, 186 Carlyle, Thomas, 89, 191 Categories, the leading reli- gious, in early Christianity, Sin and Redemption, in Scholastic Golden Age, Nature and Supernature, ♦160-163 Centre-party, the German Catholic, 138, 165, 166 Character, National, can change, for it has changed in England, France, Ger- many, 1 99 Charles II., King of England, 199 China, German Militarist " f rightfulness " in, 99, 100 Chivalry, Mediaeval, 109 Christian position as to State and War derives its appar- ent hesitation partly from its nobly realist insight into essentially amphibious na- ture of man's life here below, *i 1 3-1 17 Church, the, the specifically religious complex, *I09-II2; its two chief functions, * 1 1 2, 113; its roots in the teach- ing of Jesus, *39-4i ; cannot be straightaway conceived as built up from below, 47, *iii, 112 Church and State, the great complexes respectively of Supernatural and of Na- tural Morality, *i62, 163 Cicero, M. T., his definition of the State, 43, 44 Colonial rule, Germans with- out the gifts necessary for successful, *i 38-1 39; why Germans think they possess these gifts, * 139 -143; bru- tality of Germans, 169; megalomania as to. opposed by Bismarck, 186, 187; what it might become for Germans, 197 Commercialism, boundless, is vulgarising us all, 188 Conservatism, its present- day troubles, according to Troeltsch, 96 Cramb, J. A., his Germany and England, 1914, deeply INDEX 2IS infected with outlook it describes, 189, 190 Cromwell, Oliver, 6j, 92, 190, 191, 199 Cruelty, appaxently greater German than English, probable causes of, *I45- 153 Culture, German, excessive claims made for it by Ger- mans: by a present-day scholar, 7, 8; by J. G. Fichte, 97, 98; *I7S-I77 Dante, on Nature and Super- nature, 161; his Divina Commedia, 177 Darwin, Charles, escapes from his own life, into that of an earth-worm, 71; his Origin of Species, 1859, pressed by German materi- alists into service of aggres- sive Monism, 185, 186 Darwinism, the crude, of F. Naumann critically ex- amined, * 59-64 Democracy, present-day, its hypocrisy according to Prof. Troeltsch, 77, 96 Denmark, Prussia's war with, 1864, 188 Denzinger, H., his Enchiri- dion Syrabolorum et De- clarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum, ed, 191 3, 47 Descartes, Ren6, inadequate starting-point of his philo- sophy, ♦84, 8$ Dilthey, Wilhelm, his Jugend- geschichte Hegels, 1905, utilised, ♦133-135 Dog and Man, Man and God, 305, 206 Donaldson, Principal Sir James, his address in Octo- ber 1914, 193 Duhm, Prof. Bernhard, his Jesaiah, 124 East End of London, looting of German shops in, 192 Encyclical, the Papal, Im- mortale Dei, 1885, 13, 46, 164 English, the, compared with the German as to need of theory, * 125 -128; indi- vidual self-consciousness, ♦146-149; pitch and cost of psychic life, 149; egotism and egoism, 1 56 ; are capable of panic, 192; unfanatical in long run, 192, 193; colonising gift and test, 80-83 Eucken, Prof. Rudolf, 124, 171 Europeanism, Ranke's intense, approved by Troeltsch, 98, 99; criticised, 100, loi Eusebius, his Ecclesiastical History quoted, 41 Evolution and Epigenesis dis- tinguished, 62 Fenelon, Archbishop, and " nerves," " nervousness," 149 Ferrero, Guilielmo, on last days of July 1914, 11 Feuerbach, Ludwig, and Ger- man theoretical bent, 132, 208 Fichte, J. G., on the State, 91; his Reden an die deutsche Nation, 1808, their Chauvinism, 97, 98 ; quoted as to new education, ♦173- 175; as to prerogative of Germanic peoples that re- tain Germanic speech, ♦175- 177 Fieschi, Sinibaldo de, the 2l6 THE GERMAN SOUL canonist, first uses the term Persona Ficta, 46, 164 Figgis, Rev. J. N., Studies in Political Thought, 1907, 11, 112 France recovers from the dreams of Louis XIV. and Napoleon I., 66, 199; Eng- land regrets her Hundred Years' War against, 67 Frederick II., King of Prussia, his unscrupulous war against the Empress Maria Theresa, 104, 105, 137; how referred to by the young Hegel, 134; his life- work required romantic drapery if it was to gain Germans generally, 135, 136 French Yellow Book on causes and preliminaries of Great War, 118 Frischeisen-Kohler, Dr. Max, a critically Realist philo- sopher, 209 George II., King of England, 199 George V., King of England, 199 German, the: his urgent need of theory, *i25-i28; strength and weakness ac- cruing thence, * 128- 132; his tendency to Mythology, Pantheism, Force, Worship, ♦132-138; his bitterness against England, its double cause, ♦143-145; is perhaps by nature not specially cruel, but is without individual self-consciousness or loose- knitted mind, ♦145-153; is strongly visionary, 156, 174, ♦210-212 German and English com- pared: as to theoretical bent, * 1 25-1 28; self -con- sciousness, ♦146-149; pitch of the psychic life, ♦149, 150; generally, ♦154-157 German, Scotch, and English compared, 123, 125, 132, 155 German, Italian, French, and English compared, as to need of system, ♦125-127 German, the, his three quali- ties, according to Prof. Troeltsch, as compared with the West European, 89 German groups, four, speci- ally studied: the Roman Catholics, 1 5 9- 1 66 ; the Protestants, ♦167-172; the Idealists, ♦172-179; the Materialists, ♦179-188; War Book, the, 118, 119 German race, the, not political, ♦138-143 Germany, why so formidable in war, ♦194-197 Gierke, Prof. Otto, his Althu- sius, ed. 191 3, quoted, *45; his Das deutsche Genossen- schaftsrecht, vol. 3, 188 1, 11; his general position, 112, 124, 130, 198 Givenness, the, of the facts and the faith in religion generally, 1 10; in Christian- ity in Our Lord's teaching, ♦39-41; in the Christian Church, ♦110-112; in the Roman Catholic system, 47; acutely realised by St. Paul and St. Augustine, also by Luther, 170, 171 Gnosticism, no, in teaching of Jesus, ♦40,41; 113, 114 Goethe, W. von, his inter- national outlook, 98, 199 Golden Rule, the, included, as prerequisite, within Sermon INDEX 317 on the Mount, 71; State and Church, the respective guardians of the Rule and the Sermon, 109, 162, 163 Greece, Rome conquers Greece, significance of the fact, 102, 103 ; present day, 196 Grey, Sir Edward, his dis- patches during last negotia- tions before the War, 118 Grimm, Jacob, 136 Gunkel, Hermann, his Genesis, 124, 129 Haeckel, Professor Ernst, and German need of theory, 132; his World-Riddle (1899), a preponderantly materialis- tic Monism, 185, 186 Hague, the. Conferences and Conventions, 109, 204 Haldane, Lord, 192 Hegel, G. W., his early anti- pathy to, and later admira- tion for Prussia, *i 34-1 36 ; greatness of his Logic, 129, 130; unconscious mytho- logy in, 133; the wide stretches of magnificent in- sight furnished by the Phe- nomenology and the Philo- sophy of Right, 173, 174; improves upon Kant's merely formal Good Will, 208; deficiencies of his philosophy of religion, *2o8, 209; three points in his teaching that make for in- flation, *178, 179 Hegelians, English, 8, 12, 208 Henry VIII., King of Eng- land, 199 Hermhuter, the, religious body, 209 Heyse, Paul, one of his short stories utilised, 210, 21 r Hindoos, 10 1 Hindoo Swami, a, on M)rsti- cism as the very life of Indians, 125 Holtzmann, H. J., his Neutes- tamentliche Theologie, 1897. 1911, 124, 129 Hopes, best, for Germany: German Roman Catholic Church, when re-become non-Chauvinist, 207, 208 ; German Philosophy, when become a critical Realism, 208, 209; the German artisan classes, when they acquire the religious sense, 209 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, his international spirit, 199 Hypocrisy, specially charged against Allies by Professor Troeltsch, 76-78, 89; dis- covered by South-German lady in all Anglican clerics, ♦146-149; why it is always chargeable against men and States in proportion as they put up a standard of living, *200, 201 Idealism, German, accepted, upon the whole, by Troeltsch, 90, 91; studied in Fichte's Reden, * 172- 179 Immanence and Transcend- ence, both essential to Christianity, no; pure, its attraction for our times, 207; recognised by Nau- mann as insufficient, 74 Imperialism, of Material- ist type, condemned by Troeltsch, 95, 96 Individual, the, and the State according to Kant, 90, 91 ; Fichte, 91; Troeltsch, 92; Author, 201-303 2l8 THE GERMAN SOUL Industrialism, excessive, its first invasion of Germany. 1 80 ; Puritan and American share of responsibility in its incubation, * 180- 184, 187; English contribution to, 187, 188 International Morality accord- ing to Troeltsch, yy, 78, 93, 106, 107; insisted on, *20o- 204 Israelitish- Jewish beliefs as to War, their three stages, 31-33 Italian, the, more theoretical than the English, 125, 126; politics swaying between Machiavelli and Mazzini currents, 9, 10 Japanese, the, 10 1 Jesus Christ, His direct teach- ing as to State and War, 37, 38; Kingdom of God, *34. 35 1 39-41; His Second Coming, *40, 41; ultimate character of His teaching, *39-4i, ♦11 3-1 17; HimseliE uses force, 38, 39 ! Jews, the, parties amongst, in | Our Lord's day, 33; His | attitude towards them, 37, | ^8; and Industrialism, I ♦184 i Joan of Arc, 67 ! John the Baptist, St., and \ War. 33 Junkers, the Prussian, 96, 138, 197; Bismarck watched against their full triumph, 186 Kant, Immanuel, on the Individual and the State, 90, 91 ; on Good Will, as merely formal, 208; his pedantry — the Gelehrie and the rearing of infants, 1 30, 131; influence of Scotch Calvinism traceable in, 172; free from Chauvinism, 199 Keane, Dr. A. H., on German Soul, 146 Kingdom of God, in teaching of Jesus, 34, 35; the four qualities of its advent, in that teaching, 40, 41; in teaching of Roman Catho- lic Church, 47; and the Church, *iTO-ii3, *ii3- 117 Klopstock, F. G., his Messias, 177 Kiilpe, Professor Oswald, a critically Realist philoso- pher, 209 Leibniz, G. W. von, his inter- national spirit, 98 Le Play, Frederic, his views on the working men of Europe and the social re- forms required, 187 Lessing, G. E., his confession of Pantheism, 134 Louis XIV., King of France, his unscrupulous invasion of Germany, 136, 137; modern Frenchmen have abandoned his dreams, 199 Luther, Martin, influenced throughout by his Occam- ist philosophical training, 166; loses perception, clearly attained in second Catholic stage, of two kinds of morality, 167; requires absolute certainty of his full salvation, 105. 169, 170; retains more than Calvin of Catholic mystical depth, but much less satisfactory than Calvin as concerns State Morality, 167-169; INDEX 219 his reckless teacliing as to relations between the sexes and his brutality towards peasantry, 168, 169; in- tense subtlety of his central current — traffic between sense and spirit to move only from spirit to sense, 170; doubtless partly deter- mined by deep religious motive, but effect segrega- tive, * I 70- I 72 Machiavelli, Niccolo, one of the two poles of Italian political instinct, 10; his policy adopted by Prussia, 119; Hegel's early fascination by. i34> 13s Maitland, F. W., his Intro- duction to von Gierke's Political Theories of the Middle Ages, 191 3, 1 1,44,45; quoted on State as Persona in Roman jurisprudence, 44, 45; on " national con- science," " national sins," 46; his general position, 112 Materialism, four stages of German: intense industrial- ism, 180; misapplication of Natural Science, 184-186; the too rapid, tangible success of the war of 1870, 186,187; the megalomania rampant since Bismarck's fall, 187; America and England share in responsi- bility, 180-183, 187, 188 Mathematico-Physical Science and Political Science, ac- cording to Spinoza, 66, 67; misused for furtherance of Materialism in Germany, 184-186 Mazzini, Giuseppe, one of the two poles of Italian political instinct, 11 Mercier, Cardinal, 165 Metaphysics and Religion, a certain close relatedness, *72>. 74 Meyer, Professor Eduard, his England, 1915, 8, 9; Pro- fessor Troeltsch on, 95 Moleschott, Jacob, 185 Moltke, Field-Marshal H. von, 141 Morality, Private and State, their differences, 92, 201, 202; their likenesses, 92- 94, 203; they both admit exceptions, 201-203; li^® subtly opposed to all sheer deniers of either, 203, 204; three elements essential to, according to Professor Troeltsch, 107 Moravian Brethren, the, 209 Murray, Professor Gilbert, on semi-insane suspicions of national disloyalty, 192 Mussulman charges mono- gamist with hypocrisy, 201 Mythology, a certain German bent towards, 132, 133; in Hegel, 133 Napoleon I., Emperor, vul- garity of his court, 104; his unjustifiable return from Elba, 137; his dread of Ger- man "ideologues," 172, 173; modern Frenchmen aban- don his dream of European domination, 199 Naturalists' Congress at G6t- tingen in 1854, 185 Nature and Supernature: in our Lord's teaching, 39-41 ; the dominant categories in Catholic second stage, ♦161- 163; the most fundamental 220 THE GERMAN SOUL religious principles, *205, 206; State and Church, as their respective special com- plexes, 162, 163 Naumann, Friedrich, his career, 31,48-50; his Brief e iiber Religion, 1910, 6,7, 13; on Christianity of modern individual, *5i-S3; on Jesus and the modern State, *53- 57; on Jesus and Militar- ism, ♦57,58; analysed: the three influences at work here, 59, 60; the rough Darwinism, inadequate, ♦61-64; the State, no sheer thing, force or abstraction, ♦64-70 ; Biblical criticism reveals our Lord's teaching as centrally transcendental, yet presupposing the im- manental Golden Rule, ♦70- 73 ; metaphysical essence of religion, apprehended also by Naumann, *7^, 74; on persistent influence of religion, 158; his Mittel- Europa, 191 5, 74, 75; cri- tically alluded to by Pro- fessor Troeltsch, 95 " Nerves " and " nervous- ness," present sense of, recent, 149 Newman, Cardinal, on con- science and Theism, 127, 128 Niebuhr, B. G., 136 Nietzsche, Friedrich, and Ger- man theoretical bent, 132; high pitch and cost of Ger- man psychic life illustrated from their exaggerations in soul of, ♦149-154 Occam, William, Luther, phi- losophically, is throughout disciple of, 166 Oldenberg, Professor Her- mann, his Buddha, ed. 1897, 124 Ontology essential to religion, 73 " Origins," the obsession of, 63 Pan-Germanism, 187 Pantheism, the German soul attracted to, 133; of Less- ing, Schelling, Hegel, 133- 135. 178, 179; and Machia- vellism support each other here, ♦133-135 Paul, St., his leading cate- gories, Sin and Redemption, 161, 166 Pella, the first Christian com- munity at Jerusalem retires to, 41 Penn, William, and Indus- trialism, 180-184 Persona ficta, the state as a, 44-46 Persona non ficta, the state as a, 41, 44, 46, 47, 98 Philosophy, mediaeval, of golden age, Realist, 45, ♦161 -1 63; of decline, Nominalist, 166; modem, French, Idealist, 84, 85, 208; German, Idealist, 90, 91, 97. 104. 172, 173. 178, 179, 208, 209; critically Realist, 130, 209; how a more adequate, comes to replace a less adequate, *2o8, 209 Pitch, high, of German psychic life, illustrated from inter- course between Nietzsche and Rohde, ♦149-153 Polygamy and monogamy, 201, 204 Practical Rules resulting from truths of the two Moralities and of State and Church as INDEX 221 their several complexes, *i07-ii3 Prenner, Rev. Dr. Joseph, 124 Privy council lorships and naturalised British subjects, decision concerning, 192, 193 Problem, precise, probed in these studies, * 14-1 7. ♦29- 31 Protestantism : Lutheran, 166- 172 ; Calvinist, 167, 168, 180- 183 ; Puritan generally, 180- 183 Prussia, Hegel's attitude towards, *i 34-1 36; how it gained possession of the German soul, *i 32-1 38 Quakers, the, and Industrial- ism, 182 Raleigh, Sir Walter, his Might is Right, 1 9 14, 118 Ranke, Leopold von, his excessive Europeanism accepted by Professor Troeltsch, 98, 99; criticised, ♦lOO, 10 1 ; his identifica- tion of external power of states with their interior worth criticised, *ioi-i04; and Prussianism, 136; in his Letters, 148 Realism, the noble, of Chris- tianity, 39, ♦71-73, 114, 207 Realism, a sober, criticsd Philosophical, growing in Germany. 208, 209 Real-Politih, term used in un- favourable sense by author, 9, 29, 68, 83, 119, 138; used in favourable sense by Professor Troeltsch, 94 Religion and Givenness, 39- 41,47, *iio-ii2, 170, 171; and Metaphysics, 7^, 74; Transcendental and Im- manental, 39-41, *70-74; ♦107-117, 161, 163 ;attempts at purely Immanental, 206, 207; two kinds of, 162; its attitude to this life and to the Beyond, 71, 72, 112 Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, die. 191 3, on F. Naumann, utilised, 50 Revelation, the, of St. John, on Nations and War, 42, 43 Reventlow, Count, 96 Roberts, Field-Marshal Earl, his commendation of Cramb's Germany and Eng- land, 1914, 190 Rohde, Erwin, his Psyche, 1 24, 129; in his intercourse with Nietzsche, 150-153 Roman Catholic Church, its hierarchical organisation, not a long story of decay or fraud, 1 1 1 ; and Per- sonality of the State, 46, 47; has passed through three stages in the matter, 1 59-165 ; its future cannot be Chauvinistic, even in Germany, 207, 208 Roman Conquest of Greece, 102, 103 Roman jurisprudence, its con- ception of the State, 44, 45 Rumania, 196 Sadler, Dr. M. E., his Modem Germany and the Modern World, 1 9 14, 193 Schelling, F. W. J. von, his early Pantheism, 133, 134; his later positions, 172, 173 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 173 School and University educa- tion, English, greater con- THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY WILL INCREASE TO 50 CENTS ON THE FOURTH DAY AND TO $1.00 ON THE SEVENTH DAY OVERDUE. MAR 32 1943 W '^EC'D LB AUTO ni.qn AUG 2 2 1986 &^ A 3EC0 7 1988 R ^'68-iOPM NOV E3 ^e^:. KC CIS. m a 5-ft SEP 11 1386 Sto-j'^i'.-- LD 21-100m-7,'39(402s) GENERAL LIBRARY - U.C. BERKELEY BDQa8t>27ai 342482 i>r) b / UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY