VI

In order to throw some light into the obscurity of that social

dreamland which no one seriously discusses because no one honestly

believes in it, let us, as it were, cut out and examine a section from

the fully socialized Germany of the future. Let us suppose that

certain economic and social conditions have lasted for a generation or

so, and have therefore become more or less stabilized. At a normal

rate of progress this state of things should be reached about the end

of this century.

To begin with, let us make two very optimistic assumptions--first,

that technical progress in Germany shall have developed to a point at

which we are no longer impossibly outclassed and distanced by foreign

nations, and, secondly, that by a timely and far-reaching reform of

education and culture (the lowest cost of which must be set down at

about three milliards of marks) the complete breakdown of civilisation

may be averted. This reform is one which must be taken in hand very

early, for _after_ the event its adoption is improbable. A third, less

optimistic but on that account more probable assumption may be added

to this--namely, that the Western countries shall have progressed

towards Socialism more steadily and therefore more slowly, and that

at the period of our comparison America shall find itself at the stage

of State-Socialism, not of full socialization. We know that in making

this assumption we are smoothing the way for attack to our

professional opponents, uncritical and self-interested, who with one

blast of the fanfare of world-revolution can scatter our further

observations to the winds.

Full Socialism is characterized, as we have seen, by the abolition of

all incomes that are not worked for, and the fact that there are no

more rich. But this criterion must be limited in its application, for

it can never be fully realized.

According to the theory and the laws every one must hold some

appointment and be paid for his work, or for not working. What he is

paid, however, he can at will utilize, or waste, or hoard up, or give,

or gamble away, or destroy. He cannot invest it, or get interest on it

or turn into capital, because these private undertakings or means of

production will no longer exist.

Now each of these assumptions is so shaky that not only must trifling

divergences and shortcomings be winked at, but the meshes of the

system are so wide that only a rough approximation to the ideal is

possible.

It is true that every one can be made to hold some appointment and be

paid for some minimum of work, but no one can be prevented from

devoting his leisure hours to some work of rare quality and turning it

into value for his own purposes. He can make himself useful by

subsidiary employment of an artistic, scientific or technical

character, by rendering services or assistance of various kinds, by

advising, or entertaining, or acting as a guide to strangers, or going

on employment abroad, and no law can prevent him from turning his

services into income even if he was merely paid in kind. Gaming and

betting will flourish and many will grow rich by them. A man who has

lost his money and who has exhausted his rights to an advance from the

public institutions for that object will have recourse to lenders who

will supply him with bread and meat and clothes, and who will make

money by it. Similarly with people who are tempted to make

acquisitions beyond their standard remuneration. On every side we

shall see private stores of goods of all kinds, which will take the

place of property as formerly understood.

There will be an enormous temptation to smuggling and profiteering

which will reach a height far surpassing all scandals of the war and

revolution periods. Foreigners and their agents, who look after the

export trade "from Government to Government," will help hoarders and

savers to turn their goods to account. Suppose citizens are attacked

because their senseless expenditure is a mockery of their legal

remuneration, they will say: I got this from friends--that I got by

exchange--this came from abroad--my relatives in America sent me that.

Law, control, terrorism, are effective just so long as there is not a

blade of grass in the land--once remove the fear of hunger and they

are useless. Great properties will arise, drawing interest both abroad

and at home, and they will grow by evasions and bribery. The

profiteer, the true child of the "great days," will not perish from

the land, on the contrary, he will grow tougher the more he is

persecuted, he will be the rich man of the future, and he will form a

constant political danger if he and his fellows combine.

So long as we have not acquired an entirely new mentality, one which

detaches men from possessions, which points them towards the Law,

which binds the passions, and sharpens the conscience, so long will

the principle of "No rich people and no workless income" have to be

contracted into the formula, "There ought to be none."

Without this profound alteration of mentality, even the legally

prescribed incomes will exhibit quite grotesque variations, and will

adapt themselves to the rarity-value of special gifts, to

indispensable qualities, to favouritism, with a crudity quite unknown

to-day. A scarcity of Ministers, a Professor's nourishment, and

soldiers' supplies, will then as now be met according to the law of

supply and demand. Consider what ten years' practice in the war for

wages and strike-management, with the public in it as partisans, will

bring with it in the way of favouritisms, celebrities, and

indispensabilities. Popular jockeys, successful surgeons, managers of

sports' clubs, tenors, demimondaines, farce-writers and champion

athletes could, even to-day, if they were class-conscious and joined

together to exploit their opportunities, demand any income they liked.

Even as a matter of practical political economy, the cinema-star (or

whatever may succeed her) will be able to prescribe to the Government

what amount of adornments, drawn from Nature or Art, are necessary for

her calling, and what standard of life she must maintain in order to

keep herself in the proper mood.

Organizers, popular leaders, authors and artists will announce and

enforce their demands to the full limit of their rarity-value. At a

considerable distance below these come the acquired and more or less

transferable powers and talents. The Russians for the first few months

believed in a three-fold order of allowances, rising within a limit of

about one to two. If the ideas now prevailing have not undergone a

radical change, then we may, in the society of the future, look for

divergences of income in the limit of one to a thousand.

Therefore the principle that there shall be no more rich people must

again be substantially limited. We must say, "There will be people

receiving extraordinary incomes in kind to which must be added the

claims to personal service which these favoured persons will lay down

as conditions of their work."

In its external, arithmetical structure, the fabric of life and its

requirements in the new order will resemble that of to-day far more

closely than most of us imagine--on the other hand, the inward and

personal constitution of man will be far more different. Already we

can observe the direction of the movement.

Extravagance and luxury will continue to exist, and those who practise

it will be, as they are to-day, and more than to-day, the profiteers,

the lucky ones, and the adventurers. Excessive wealth will be more

repulsive than it is now; whether it will be less valued depends upon

the state of public ethics, a topic which we shall have to consider

later. It is probable that in defiance of all legislation wealth will

turn itself into expenditure and enjoyment more rapidly and more

recklessly than to-day.

But the relics of middle-class well-being will by that time have been

consumed; the families which for generations have visibly incorporated

the German spirit will less than others contrive to secure special

advantages by profiteering and evading the laws; as soon as their

modest possessions are taxed away or consumed they will melt into the

general mass of needy people who will form the economic average of the

future.

The luxury which will exhibit itself in streets and houses will have a

dubious air; every one will know that there is something wrong with

it, people will spy and denounce, and find to their disgust that

nothing can be proved; the well-off will be partly despised, partly

envied; the question how to suppress evasions of the law will take up

a good half of all public discussions, just as that of capitalism does

now. The hateful sight of others' prosperity cannot, even at home,

not to mention foreign countries, be withdrawn from the eyes of the

needy masses; capitalism will have merely acquired another name and

other representatives.

The fact that the average of more or less cultivated and responsible

folk are plunged in poverty will not be accepted as the consequence of

an unalterable natural law, nor as a case of personal misfortune; it

will be set down to bad government, and the rising revolutionary

forces of the fifth, sixth and seventh classes will nourish the

prevailing discontent in favour of a new revolt. For the greater

uniformity of the average way of life and its general neediness will

not in itself abolish the division of classes. I have already often

enough pointed out that no mechanical arrangements can avail us here.

At first there will be three, or more probably four classes who, in

spite of poverty, will not dissolve in the masses, and who, through

their coherence and their intellectual heritage are by no means

without power. The Bolshevist plan of simply killing them out will not

be possible in Germany, they are relatively too numerous; persecution

will weld them closer together, and their traditional experiences,

habits of mind, and capacity, will make it necessary to have recourse

to them and employ them again and again.

The first of these classes is that of the feudal nobility. Their

ancient names cannot be rooted out of the history of Germany, and even

in their poverty the bearers of these names will be respected--all

the more if, as we may certainly assume, they maintain the effects of

their bodily discipline, and the visible tradition of certain forms of

life and thought. They will be strengthened by their mutual

association, their relationship with foreign nobility will give them

important functions in diplomacy; these are two elements which they

have in common with Catholicism and Judaism. They will retain their

inclination and aptitude for the calling of arms and for

administration; their reactionary sentiments will lead now to success,

now to failure, and by both the inner coherence of the class will be

fortified. Finally, the inevitable reversion to an appreciation of the

romantic values of life will make a connexion with names of ancient

lineage desirable to the leading classes, and especially to the

aristocracy of officialism.

This aristocracy of officialism forms the second of the new strata

which will come to light. The first office-bearers of the new era, be

their achievements great or small, are not to be forgotten. Their

descendants are respected as the bearers of well-known names; in their

families the practice of politics, the knowledge of persons and

connexions are perpetuated; fathers, in their lifetime, look after the

interests of sons and daughters and launch them on the same path. From

these, and from the first stratum, the representatives of Germany in

foreign lands are chosen, and in this way a certain familiarity with

international life and society will be maintained. They will have the

provision necessary for their position abroad, and will also find

ways and means to keep up a higher standard of life at home. Persons

in possession of irregular means of well-being will offer a great deal

to establish connexions with these circles, which control so many

levers in the machine of State.

The third group consists of the descendants of what was once the

leading class in culture and in economics. Here we find a spirit

similar to that of the refugees, _émigrés_ and Huguenots of the past.

The lower they sink in external power, the more tenaciously they hold

to their memories. Every family knows every other and cherishes the

lustre of its name, a lustre augmented by legendary recollections, all

the more when the achievements of their class are ostentatiously

ignored in the new social order. People spare and save to the last

extremity in order to preserve and hand down some heirloom--a musical

instrument, a library, a manuscript, a picture or two. A puritanical

thrift is exercised in order, as far as possible, to maintain

education, culture and intellectuality on the old level; to this class

culture, refinement of life as an end in itself, the practice of

religion, classical music, and artistic feeling will fly for refuge.

No other class understands this one; it holds itself aloof, it looks

different from the rest in its occupations, its habits, its garb and

its forms of life. It supplies the new order with its scholars, its

clergy, its higher teaching power, its representatives of the most

disinterested and intellectual callings. Like the monasteries of the

Middle Ages, it forms an island of the past. Its influence rises and

falls periodically, according to the current ideas of the time, but

its position is assured by its voluntary sacrifices, by its knowledge

and by the purity of its motives.

A fourth inexpugnable and influential stratum will in all probability

be formed by the middle-class landowners and the substantial peasants.

Even though the socialization of the land should be radically carried

through--which is not likely to be the case--it will remain on paper.

A class of what may be called State-tenants, estate-managers, or

leaders of co-operative organizations will very much resemble a

landowning class. Its traditional experience and the ties that bind it

to the soil make it a closed and well-defined body, self-conscious and

masterful through the importance of its calling, its indispensability

and its individualism. It suffers no dictation as regards its manner

of life. Here we shall see the conservative traditions of the country

strongly mustered for defence, incapable of being eliminated as a

political force, and forming a counterpoise to the radical democracy

of the towns.

Everywhere we find a state of strain and of cleavage. The

single-stratum condition of society cannot be reached without a

profound inward change; politics are still stirred and shaken by

conflicts, and society by the strife of classes. A very different

picture from the promised Utopian Paradise of a common feeding-ground

for lions and sheep!

We are all aggrieved by the illegal opulence of the profiteers, but we

are all liable to the infection. The feudalistic Fronde awaits its

opportunity. The aristocracy of office endeavours to monopolize the

State-machine. The _émigrés_ of culture find themselves looked askance

at, on suspicion of intellectual arrogance, and they insist that the

country cannot get on without them. The agriculturalists are feared,

when they show a tendency to revolt against the towns. The ruling

class, that is to say the more or less educated masses of the

city-democracy, looks in impatient discontent for the state of general

well-being which refuses to be realized, lays the blame alternately on

the four powerful strata and on the profiteers, and fights now this

group now that, for better conditions of living.

But the conditions of living do not improve--they get worse. The level

of the nation's output has been sinking from the first day of the

Revolution onwards. The absolute productivity of work, the relative

efficacy and the quality of the product, have all deteriorated. With a

smaller turnover we have witnessed a falling-off in the excellence of

the goods, in research-work, and in finish. Industrial plant has been

worked to death and has not yet recovered. Auxiliary industries,

accessories and raw materials have fallen back. High-quality

workmanship has suffered from defective schooling, youthful

indiscipline and the loss of manual dexterity. The new social order

has lost a generation of leaders in technique, scholarship and

economics. Universities, with all institutions of research and

education, have suffered from this blank. Technical leadership is

gone, and the deterioration in quality has reacted detrimentally on

output. We can now turn out nothing except what is cheap and easy, and

what can be produced without traditional skill of hand, without

serious calculation and research. For all innovations, all work of

superior quality, Germany is dependent on the foreigner. The

atmosphere of technique has vanished, and the stamp of cheap hireling

labour is on the whole output of the country.

In the weeks of the Revolution street orators used to tell us that

five hundred Russian professors had signed a statement that the level

of culture had never been so high as under Bolshevism. And Berlin

believed them! To educate Russia it would take, to begin with, a

million elementary schools with a yearly budget of several dozen

milliards of roubles, and a corresponding number of higher schools and

universities: if every educated Russian for the next twenty years were

to become a teacher, there would not be enough of them--not to speak

of the requirements of transport, of raw materials and of agriculture.

The fabric of a civilization and a culture cannot be annihilated at

one blow, nor can it grow up save in decades and centuries. The

maintenance of the structure demands unceasing toil and unbroken

tradition; the breach that has been made in it in Germany can only be

healed by the application in manifold forms of work, intellect and

will; and this hope we cannot entertain.[10]

But we have not yet done with the question of social strata and inward

cleavage. Revolutionary threats are causing strife every day.

Revolution against revolution--how is this possible? We are not

speaking of a reactionary revolution but of the "activist."

In an earlier work I discussed the theory of continuous

revolution.[11] Behind every successful revolutionary movement there

stands another, representing one negation more than its predecessor.

Behind the revolt of the aristocracy stood that of the bourgeoisie,

behind that of the bourgeoisie stood Socialism. Behind the now ruling

fourth class[12] rises the fifth, and a sixth is coming into sight. If

a ninth should represent pure Anarchism, we may see an eleventh

proclaiming a dictatorship, and a twelfth standing for absolute

monarchy.

To-day the Majority Socialists are in power, that is to say the Right

section of the fourth class. This is composed of the older, trained

and work-willing Trade Unionists, who are amazed at the Revolution,

who do not regard it as quite legitimate, but who are determined to defend

the _status quo_ in so far as a certain degree of self-determination

and elbow-room in the material conditions of life still remain to them.

The Left section consists of youths and of persons disgusted with

militarism, ignorant of affairs but cherishing a certain independence

of judgment; still ready for work but equally so for politics. To

these, as a "forward" party, the doctrinaire theorists have allied

themselves. The designation of the party "The Independents" is

characteristic; its goal, "All power to the Soviets," is a catchword

from Russia.

A fifth class is now emerging--the work-shy. The others call them the

tramp-proletariat, the disgruntled, the declassed, who set their hopes

on disorder. Their goal is still undetermined--their favourite

expression is "bloodhound," when those in power, or Government troops,

are referred to.

Then comes the sixth class, still partly identified with the Left of

the fourth and embryonically attached to the fifth. These are the

indomitable loafers and shirkers, physically and mentally unsound,

aliens in the social order, excluded by their sufferings, their

punishments, their vices and passions; self-excluded, repudiators of

law and morality, born of the cruelty of the city, pitiable beings,

not so much cast out of society as cast up against it, as a living

reproach to its mechanical organization. If these ever come into the

light in politics, they will demand a kind of syndicalistic

communism.

That is as far as we can see at present into the as yet unopened germs

of continuous revolutionary movement. In these are contained the

infinite series of all principles that can conceivably be supported;

and it would be wholly false to see in this series merely so many

successive steps in moral degeneration, even though the earlier stages

should proceed on a flat denial of ethical principles. Later on will

come revivals and restorations, political, ethical and religious, and

each time we shall see the rising stratum attaching to itself strays

and converts, above all, the disappointed and ambitious, from those

that went before.

But the number of revolutions will grow till we lose count of them,

and each, however strenuously it may profess its horror of bloodshed,

will have only one hope and possibility: that of defending itself by

armed force against its successor. The game is a grotesquely dishonest

one, because every aspirant movement will cast against its forerunner

the charge of ruling by bloodshed, while it itself is already

preparing its armed forces for the conflict.

It is therefore wholly vain to hope that an advanced social

organization implies stability, that a brotherhood mechanically

decreed will exclude further revolutions, and will establish eternally

an empire of righteousness and justice according to any preconceived

pattern.

The fiercest hatred will prevail amongst those who are most closely

associated--for instance, between handworkers and brainworkers,

between leaders and followers; and this hate will be all the more

inappeasable when it is open to every one to rise in the world, and

none can cherish the excuse that he is the victim of a social system

of overwhelming power. To-day this hatred is masked by the general

class-hatred--hatred of the monopolists of culture, of position and of

capital.

At the bottom of it, however, lies even to-day the more universal

hatred of the defeated for the victor, and when those three monopolies

have fallen, it will emerge in its original Cain-like form. It cannot

be appeased by any mechanical device. Human inequality can never be

abolished, human accomplishment and work will always vary, and the

human passion for success will always assert itself.

We have discussed the material foundation and the stratification of

the German people when full socialization has been realized. Let us

now forecast the manner of their existence.

The future community is poor; the individual is poor. The average

standard of well-being corresponds, at best, to what in peace-time one

would expect from an income of 3000 marks.[13] But the requirements of

the population are not mediævally simplified--they could not be, in

view of the density of the population and the complexity of industrial

and professional vocations. They are manifold and diverse, and they

are moreover intensified by the spectacle of extravagance offered by

the profiteering class and the licence of social life. The traditional

garden-city idyll of architects and art-craftsmen is a Utopia about as

much like reality as the pastoral Arcadianism of Marie Antoinette.

All things of common use are standardized into typical forms. It must

not be supposed, however, that they are based on pure designs and

models. The taste of the artist will clash with that of the crowd, and

since the former has no authority to back him he will have to

compromise. The compromise, however, consists in cheap imitation of

foreign models, for in foreign countries art-industry will exist, and

no legislation can prevent its products from finding their way (in

reproductions or actual examples) into Germany and being admired

there. Our half or wholly imitative products are turned out as cheaply

as possible, in substitute-materials, and are made as well or as ill

as the relics of our craftsmanship permit, or as our existing

machinery for the purpose is capable of. Cheapness and ease of

manufacture are the principles aimed at, for even with narrow means no

one will want to do without certain things; fashions still prevail,

and will have to be satisfied with things that do not last, but can be

constantly changed.

How far will a new system of education tend to simplify the needs of

men and women and to purify their taste? Probably very little, for

good models will be lacking, poverty is not fastidious, and the taste

of the populace is the sovereign arbiter. But on this taste it depends

whether vulgar ornaments and gewgaws, frivolities and bazaar-horrors,

are to satisfy the desires of the soul.

Objects of earlier art and industry have been alienated through need

of money or destroyed by negligence. Here and there one may find an

old cup or an engraving, as we do to-day in plundered territories, but

these things are disconnected specimens; all they can do is

occasionally to interest an artist. Whoever wants to procure some

object or to get something done which has not been standardized in the

common range of approved requirements must gain it by a tedious course

of pinching and saving. Personal possessions in the way of books,

musical instruments, works of art, as well as travel outside the

prescribed routes are rarities; a tree of one's own, a horse of one's

own are legendary things.

Thus luxury in its better aspect has gone to ruin quicker than in the

bad. All outlay devoted to culture, to beauty, to invigoration has

dried up; all that survives is what stimulates, what depraves and

befouls; frivolities, substitutes and swindles. What we have arrived

at is not the four-square simplicity of the peasant-homestead, but a

ramshackle city suburb. To some of us it is not easy, and to many it

is not agreeable to picture to themselves the aspect of a thoroughly

proletarianized country, and the difficulty lies in the fact that the

popular mind has, as it were by universal agreement, resolved to

conceive the future on a basis of domestic prosperity about tenfold as

great as it can possibly be. The leaders and office-holders of the

proletariat have an easy task in convincing themselves and others that

what they approve and are struggling for is the so-called middle-class

existence with all the refinement and claims of historic culture.

Tacitly, as a matter of course, they accept what plutocracy has to

give them, and imagine that the loans they take up from the

civilization and culture of the past can be redeemed from the social

gains of the future.

The stages at which a nation arrives year by year, can be estimated by

its building. In the new order, little is being built. Apart from

certain perfunctory garden-cities, which are being erected for the

principle of the thing, to meet the needs of a few thousand favoured

households, and which perhaps will never be finished, we will for

decades have to content ourselves with new subdivisions and

exploitation of the old buildings; old palaces packed to the roof with

families, will stand in the midst of vegetable gardens and will

alternate with empty warehouses in the midst of decayed cities. In the

streets of the suburbs the avenues of trees will be felled, and in the

cities grass will grow through the cracks of the pavement.

For a long time it used to be believed that the passion of the

landscape painters of the seventeenth century for introducing ruins

with hovels nestling among them arose from a feeling for romance.

This is not so--they only painted what they saw around them after the

ravages of the Thirty Years' War. It must not be supposed, however,

that the forecast in these pages is based on the consequences of the

war; these no doubt must darken our picture of the future; but the

shadows, which I have put in as sparingly as I could, are essentially

the expression of a greatly reduced economic efficiency, combined with

the uniformity produced by the general proletarianization of life with

the absence of any correcting factor in individual effort of a

rational character and of the influence of higher types.

A brighter trait in the material conditions of life will be formed by

effort of a collective character, such as even the most penurious

community may be able to undertake. The more severely the domestic

household has to pinch, and the more unattractive it thereby becomes,

the more completely will life be forced into publicity. Private claims

and aspirations, which cannot be satisfied, will be turned over to the

public. Men will gather in the streets and places of public resort,

and have more mutual intercourse than before, since every transaction

of life, even the most insignificant, will have to be a subject of

discussion, agreement and understanding. In all the arrangements of

social life, _e.g._ for news, communications, supplies, discussion and

entertainment, and demands will be made and complied with for greater

convenience and comprehensiveness, for popular æsthetics and popular

representation. In these arrangements and in these alone Art will

have to find its functions and its home. Public buildings, gardens,

sanatoriums, means of transit and exhibitions will be established at

great cost. All the demands of the spirit and of the senses will seek

their satisfaction in public. There will be no lack of popular

performances, excursions, tours and conducted visits to collections;

of clubs, libraries, athletic meetings and displays. The aspect of

this tendency from the point of view of culture and ethics we have

still to consider; in its social aspect (apart from the fact that it

causes a vacuum in the home and forces young people to the surface of

life, and in spite of its mechanical effect) it will act as a

comforting reminiscence of the civic commonalty and solidarity of

mediæval times.

In considering the spiritual and cultural life of a fully socialized

society, we have to start with the assumption that any one man's

opinion and decision are as good as another's. Authority, even in

matters of the highest intellectual or spiritual character, only

exists in so far as it is established, acknowledged and confirmed

either by direct action of the people's will, or indirectly through

their representatives. Every one's education and way of life are much

the same; there are no secrecies, no vague authority attaching to

special vocations; no one permits himself to feel impressed by any

person or thing. Every one votes, whether it be for an office, a

memorial, a law, or a drama, or does it through delegates or the

delegates of delegates. Every one is determined to know the how and

where and why of everything--just as to-day in America--and demands a

plausible reason for it. The reply, "This is a matter you don't

understand," is impossible.

Everything is referred to one's own conscience, one's own

intelligence, one's own taste, and no one admits any innate or

acquired superiority in others. In debate, the boundaries between the

ideal and the practicable are obliterated; for on the one hand every

one is too much preoccupied with material needs, and on the other, too

confident, too unaccustomed to submit himself to what in former days

was called a deeper insight, too loosely brought up to let himself be

taught. We never, therefore, hear such judgments as: This, although it

is difficult, is a book to be read; this drama ought to have been

produced although it is not sensational; I don't myself care for this

memorial, but it must remain because a great artist made it; this is a

necessary branch of study, although it has no practical application; I

will vote for this man on account of his character and ability,

although he has made no election-promises. On the other hand, the

following kind of argument will have weight: This historic building

must be demolished, for it interferes with traffic; this collection

must be sold, for we need money; we need no chair of philosophy, but

we do need one for cinema-technique; these ornamental grounds are the

very place for a merry-go-round; tragedies are depressing, they must

not be performed in the State theatres. Let us recall certain oversea

legislation--carried out, be it noted in countries still swayed by the

traditional influence of culture--and these examples will not seem

exaggerated.

Where there is no appeal to authority, where none need fear

disapproval or ridicule, where convenience is prized and thrift rules

supreme, there thought and decision will be short-breathed, and will

never look beyond the needs of the day. Who will then care for far-off

deductions, for wide arcs of thought? Calculation comes to the front,

everything unpractical is despised; opinions are formed by discussion,

everyday reading and propaganda. Men demand proofs, success, visible

returns. The fewer the aims, the stronger will be their attraction.

People are tolerant, for they are used to hearing the most varied

opinions, and all opinions have followers, from the water-cure to

Tâoism; but the only opinion of any influence is that whose followers

are many.

Public opinion settles everything. The champions of absolute values

have to accommodate themselves to the law of competition. Religious

teaching has to seek the favour of the times by the same methods as a

new system of physical culture. A work of art must compete for votes.

Only by popularity-hunting can anything come to life; there will be no

doing without much talking. As in the later days of Greece, rhetoric

and dialectic are the most powerful of the arts.

And since manual labour cherishes silently or openly a bitter grudge

against intellectual labour, the latter has to protect itself by a

pretence of sturdy simplicity; when two teachers are competing for the

head-mastership of a classical school each tries to prove that he has

the hornier hand.

Most things in this new order are decided by weight of numbers.

Advertisement and propaganda are banished from socialized industry and

commerce; instead, they compete in the service of personal and ideal

aims--in elections, theatres, systems of medicine, superstitions,

arts, appointments, professorships, churches.

Art has for the third time changed its master--after the princes,

Mæcenas, the middle-class market; after Mæcenas, the plebs, and export

trade. Whether by means of representation through gilds, by

compulsion, by patronage, or by favour, Art has become dependent; it

must explain, exhort, contend; it can no longer rest proudly on

itself. It must aim at getting a majority on its side, and this it can

only do by sensationalism. Like all other features of intellectual

life, it must march with the times. Like all technique, research,

learning and handicraft it suffers through the loss, for several

generations, of tradition and hereditary skill, but together with this

drop there is also a drop in the character of the demand; quality has

given way to actuality.[14]

Certain reactions based on practical experience are not excluded;

the constant comparison with the past and with foreign countries will

show the value of the cultivation of a science, of an art which has no

fixed prepossessions and serves no immediate aims. Measures are taken,

though without much conviction, by free Academies or the like, to win

back something of this; but the atmosphere is not favourable to such

attempts, and an artificial and sterile discipline is all that can

result.

The general tone is that of an excitable, loquacious generation, bent

on actualities and matters of practical calculation, fonder of debate

than of work, not impressed by any authority, prizing success,

watching all that goes on abroad, taking refuge in public from the

sordidness of private life, and passionately hostile to all

superiority. Through the constant secession of elements to which this

tone is antipathetic a kind of natural selection is constantly taking

place, and the political defencelessness of the transition period

favours disintegrating tendencies of foreign origin. The carving away

of ancient German territories works in the same direction. Apart from

the varying influence of the four strata already referred to, the

general tone will be set by the half-Slavonic lower classes of Middle

and North Germany, who have brought about and who control the existing

conditions, and by the other elements which have been assimilated to

these.

In place of German culture and German intellectuality we have a state

of things of which a foretaste already exists in parts of America and

of Eastern Europe. The fully socialized order, repelling all tutelage

through those strata which possess a special tradition, outlook and

mentality, has created its own form of civilization.