ws the facts has not the capacity
of generalization. Politics must be mainly empirical. The political
thinker does not reason forward from the past to the present, but
backwards from the present to the past. He studies the present results
of the mature experience of many ages, and then explains the distant
past in the light of the present.

VII.--PRUSSIA THE SOLE STANDARD OF POLITICAL VALUES.

Not only has Prussian history been the centre of all Treitschke's
activities; it also supplies him with the sole standard of all
political values, the sole test of the truth of all political
theories. With superb logic he deduces all his political system from
the vicissitudes of the Brandenburg State. His sympathies and
antipathies, his affinities and repulsions, are Prussian. Prussia and
the German Empire have monopolized all human virtues. His only enemies
are the enemies of the Prussian State (see paragraphs VIII. and IX. of
this Essay).

Prussia is a national State, exclusive, self-sufficient,
self-contained. Therefore, the national State is the supreme and final
political reality (see paragraph XI.).

All the theories which challenge or threaten this conception of the
national State are dismissed by Treitschke as damnable heresies: the
heresy of individualism (see paragraph XII.), the heresy of
internationalism (see paragraph XIII.), and the heresy of imperialism
(paragraph XIV.).

The one aim of the Prussian State has been the extension of Prussian
power. Therefore the will to power must be the fundamental dogma of
the State (paragraph XV.).

Prussia has always subordinated political ethics to national
aggrandizement; therefore Treitschke holds with Machiavelli that in
politics the end justifies the means (paragraph XVI.).

Prussia has only expanded through war. War has been the national
industry of the Prussian people. Therefore war is considered by
Treitschke as the vital principle of national life (paragraph XVII.).

Prussia has been the family estate of the Hohenzollern dynasty;
therefore the monarchy must be considered as the ideal form of
government (paragraph XVIII.).

The Prussian military aristocracy of Junkers have been the mainstay of
the Prussian State; therefore an aristocratic government is a
corollary of the monarchic form of government, and the French
democratic theory of government is the arch-heresy (paragraphs XIX.
and XX.).

Prussia has been the leading Protestant State; therefore Roman
C