When the ancient Jews enlarged their conception of Jehovah so as to
recognise in him the only living God to whom all nature and history
were subject, they did not cease to regard the universal power as
at the same time their special national deity. Here was a latent
contradiction. It was ingeniously removed by saying that Jehovah, while
not essentially a tribal deity, had chosen Israel for his people by a
free act of grace with no previous merit on their part; so that the
pride of the Jews was not without humility.
No humility, however, is mingled with the claim which the Germans now
make to a similar pre-eminence. "Modern critics," says Max Stirner,
"inveigh against religion because it sets up God, the divine, or
the moral law over against man, regarding them as external things,
whereas the critics transform all these objects into ideas in the
human mind. Nevertheless the essential mistake of religion, to assign
a mission to man at all, is not avoided by these critics, who continue
to insist that man shall be divine, or ideally human, or what not;
morality, [Pg 74] freedom, humanity, etc., are his essence." Now a
divinity which is subjective or immanent evidently cannot choose any
nation, save by dwelling and manifesting itself more particularly in
them. They can be highly favoured only in that they are intrinsically
superior, and on that account may be figuratively called vessels of
election. Therefore, if the spirit which is in a nation is not one
spirit among many in the world (as the primitive Hebrews supposed and
as a naturalistic philosophy would maintain), but is the one holy and
universal spirit, and if at the same time this spirit dwells in that
nation pre-eminently, or even exclusively, humility on the part of this
nation would evidently be out of place. Accordingly, the Germans cannot
help bearing witness to the divine virtues and prerogatives which they
find in themselves, some of which are set forth by Fichte as follows:
The present age stands precisely in the middle of earthly time, between
the era in which men were still self-seeking, earthly, and impulsive,
and the coming era in which they will live for the sake of pure ideals.
The Germans prefigure this better age, and are leading the rest of
the world into it. They have created the modern world by uniting the
political heritage of classical Europe with the true religion that
lingered in Asia, and they have raised [Pg 75] the two to a higher
unity in their _Kultur_. From them is drawn the best blood of most
other nations and the spiritual force that has fashioned them all.
The Germans have never forsaken their native land nor suffered
seriously from immigration. Their language is primitive, and they have
never exchanged it for a foreign one. Hence German alone is truly
a mother-tongue. Its intellectual terms retain a vital and vivid
connection with sensible experience. True poetry and philosophy,
therefore, exist only in German. Captious persons who judge by mere
crude feeling may fancy that German is not very melodious; but these
matters cannot be rightly judged without reference to first principles,
which in this case would prove that the sweetest language is that which
exhausts all possible sounds and combines them in all available ways.
Whether German or some other language comes nearest to this _a priori_
ideal of euphony must be left for empirical observation to decide.
The German nature, being pure, deep, earnest, and bold, has
instinctively seized upon the true essence of Christianity and
discarded with abhorrence all the lies and corruption that obscured
it. This essence is the imperative need of turning from the natural
to the ideal life. The German knows that his own soul is safe; but
this is not enough for him [Pg 76] in his unselfishness. His zeal is
kindled easily for warmth and light everywhere; and this zeal of his is
patient and efficacious, taking hold on real life and transforming it.
As he presses on he finds more than he sought, for he has plunged into
the quick stream of life which forges ahead of itself and carries him
forward with it. The dead heart of other nations may dream of gods in
the clouds, or of some perfect type of human life already exemplified
in the past and only to be approached or repeated in the future. The
spirit of the German is no coinage of earth; it is the living source of
all the suns, and rushes to create absolutely new things for ever. The
German mind is the self-consciousness of God.
I do not see that the strain of war or the intoxication of victory
could add much to these boasts, uttered by Fichte when, for the moment,
he had abandoned all hope of military self-assertion on the part of
his country, and relied on education and philosophy alone to preserve
and propagate German righteousness. Even in detail, what he says often
seems strangely like what official Germany is now saying. Even the
hysterical hatred of England is not absent. In England Fichte did not
see the champion of Protestantism, morality, and political liberty, nor
the constant foe of Napoleon, but only a universal commercial vampire.
His contempt for [Pg 77] the Latin races, too, was boundless. In
the matter of race, indeed, he entertained a curious idea that there
must have been, from all eternity until the beginning of history, a
primitive Normal People, a tribe of Adams and Eves; because according
to a principle which he adopted from Calvinistic theology, if all men
had been originally slaves to nature none could ever have become free.
This Normal People were, of course, the ancestors of the Germans.
Earth-born savage tribes must have existed also for the Normal People
to subdue, since but for some such conquest the primitive equilibrium
would never have been broken, Eden and the jungle would never have been
merged together, and history, which is a record of novelties, would
never have begun. The theory of evolution has rendered the reasons
for such a view obsolete; but the idea that the bulk of mankind are
mongrels formed by the union of blonde godlike creatures with some sort
of anthropoid blacks, recurred later in Gobineau and has had a certain
vogue in Germany.
Fichte, following Calvin and Kant, made a very sharp distinction
between the life of nature and that of duty. The ideal must be pursued
without the least thought of advantage. Trades, he says, must be
practised spontaneously, without any other reward than longer vigils.
The young must never hear it [Pg 78] mentioned that any one could ever
be incited or guided in life by the thought of his own preservation or
well-being. Knowledge is no report of existing things or laws which
have happened to be discovered. Knowledge is the very life of God,
and self-generated. It is "an intellectual activity for its own sake,
according to rules for their own sake." In plain English, it is pure
imagination. But the method to be imposed on this madness is fixed
innately, both for thought and for morals. Only frivolity can interfere
with a unanimous idealism.
We must not suppose that this prescription of austere and abstract aims
implies any aversion on Fichte's part to material progress, compulsory
_Kultur_, or military conquest. German idealism, as we have seen, is
not Platonic or ascetic, that it should leave the world behind. On the
contrary, its mission is to consecrate the world and show that every
part of it is an organ of the spirit. This is a form of piety akin
to the Hebraic. Even the strictest Calvinists, who taught that the
world was totally depraved, were able, in every sense of the phrase,
to make a very good thing of it. They reclaimed, they appropriated,
they almost enjoyed it. So Fichte gives us prophetic glimpses of an
idealistic Germany conquering the world. The state does not aim at
self-preservation, still less is it concerned to come to the aid
of those [Pg 79] members of the human family that lag behind the
movement of the day. The dominion of unorganised physical force must be
abolished by a force obedient to reason and spirit. True life consists
in refashioning human relations after a model innate in the mind. The
glorious destiny of Germany is to bring forth and establish the world
anew. Natural freedom is a disgraceful thing, a mere medley of sensual
and intellectual impulses without any principle of order. It is for the
Germans to decide whether a providential progress exists by becoming
themselves the providence that shall bring progress about, or whether
on the contrary every higher thought is folly. If they should fail,
history would never blame them, for in that case there would be no more
history.
The sole animating principle of history is the tendency towards a
universal Christian European monarchy. This tendency is deeper than
the plans of men and stronger than their intentions. "That a state,
even when on the very point of making war, should solemnly assert
its love of peace and its aversion to conquest, is nothing; for in
the first place it must needs make this asseveration and so hide its
real intention if it would succeed in its design; and the well-known
principle _Threaten war that thou mayst have peace_ may also be
inverted in this way: _Promise peace that thou mayst begin war with
advantage_; and [Pg 80] in the second place the state may be wholly in
earnest in its peaceful assurances, so far as its self-knowledge has
gone; but let the favourable opportunity for aggrandisement present
itself, and the previous good resolution is forgotten."
If the people are disinclined to obey the Idea, the government must
constrain them to do so. All the powers of all the citizens must be
absorbed in the state. Personal liberty could be turned to no good use
when such individuality and variety of training as are good for the
state have been provided for by its regulations. Nor must any idleness
be tolerated. An ideal education must make men over so that they shall
be incapable of willing anything but what that education wills them to
will. The state may then rely upon its subjects, "for whoever has a
well-grounded will, wills what he wills for all eternity."
As to foreign relations, the state, in obedience to its ideal mission,
must conquer the surrounding barbarians and raise them to a state of
culture. It is this process almost exclusively that has introduced
progress into history. "What impels the Macedonian hero ... to seek
foreign lands? What chains victory to his footsteps and scatters
before him in terror the countless hordes of his enemies? Is this
mere fortune? No; it is an Idea.... The civilised must rule and the
uncivilised must obey, if Right is to be the law [Pg 81] of the
world.... Tell me not of the thousands who fell round his path; speak
not of his own early death. After the realisation of his Idea, what was
there greater for him to do than to die?"
This enthusiasm for Alexander (which Hegel shared) is not merely
retrospective. "At last in one nation of the world the highest, purest
morality, such as was never seen before among men, will arise and will
be made secure for all future time, and thence will be extended over
all other peoples. There will ensue a transformation of the human race
from earthly and sensual creatures into pure and noble spirits." "Do
you know anything higher than death?... Who has a right to stand in the
way of an enterprise begun in the face of this peril?"
It may seem curious that an uncompromising puritan like Fichte, a
prophet sprung from the people, a theoretical republican who quarrelled
with his students for forming clubs and fighting duels, a fierce
idealist full of contempt for worldlings, should have so perfectly
supplied the Junkers and bankers with their philosophy. But the
phenomenon is not new. Plato, divine and urbane as he was, supplied the
dull Spartans with theirs. Men of idealistic faith are confident that
the foundations of things must be divine, and when, upon investigating
these foundations, they come upon sinister principles--blind
[Pg 82] impulse, chance, murderous competition--they fanatically
erect these very principles into sacred maxims. All strength, they are
antecedently convinced, must come from God; therefore if deception,
wilfulness, tyranny, and big battalions are the means to power, they
must be the chosen instruments of God on earth. In some such way the
Catholic Church, too, for fear of impiety, is seen blessing many a
form of deceit and oppression. Thus the most ardent speculation may
come to sanction the most brutal practice. The primitive passions so
sanctioned, because they seem to be safe and potent, are probably too
narrowly organised to sustain themselves long; and meantime they miss
and trample down the best things that mankind possesses. Nevertheless
they are a force like any other, a force not only vehement but
contagious, and capable of many victories though of no stable success.
Such passions, and the philosophies that glorify them, are sincere,
absorbing, and if frankly expressed irrefutable.
The transcendental theory of a world merely imagined by the ego, and
the will that deems itself absolute are certainly desperate delusions;
but not more desperate or deluded than many another system that
millions have been brought to accept. The thing bears all the marks
of a new religion. The fact that the established religions of Germany
are still forms [Pg 83] of Christianity may obscure the explicit and
heathen character of the new faith: it passes for a somewhat faded
speculation, or for the creed of a few extremists, when in reality it
dominates the judgment and conduct of the nation. No religious tyranny
could be more complete. It has its prophets in the great philosophers
and historians of the last century; its high priests and pharisees
in the government and the professors; its faithful flock in the
disciplined mass of the nation; its heretics in the socialists; its
dupes in the Catholics and the liberals, to both of whom the national
creed, if they understood it, would be an abomination; it has its
martyrs now by the million, and its victims among unbelievers are even
more numerous, for its victims, in some degree, are all men.
[Pg 84] CHAPTER VIII