er ourselves, and enter into
the intellectual arena of the nations, to begin a new and enduring
life with no other guiding thought than that of self-preservation and
the division of property? In the harbour of the nations is our ship to
drift aimlessly while every other knows its course, whether to a near
or distant port? Is that penurious Paradise which we have described,
the goal of Germany's hopes and struggles?

Compared with us, the French movement of the eighteenth century had an
easy task. All it had to do was to deny and demolish. When it had
cleared away the wreckage of feudalism, at once a strong new class,
the bourgeoisie, sprang up from the soil, more vigorous than its
aristocratic forerunner, and it was able to take care of itself. And
the bourgeoisie was also a class of defined boundaries, and already
trained for its task; it had long ago taken over French culture, it
alone had for a century been the champion of French ideas, it had
acquired enthusiasm for the nation, for freedom, for militarism and
for money; the aspirations for equality and fraternity were not indeed
fulfilled, but the first mechanized and plutocratic state of the
Continent came into being.

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

Our current Socialism has no qualms about bringing new nations to
birth with the aid of a few simple apparatus and radical eliminations;
it believes that the right spirit will soon enter in if only
institutions are provided for it. It would be too severe to describe
this way of thinking solely as contempt for or want of understanding
of a spiritual mission. Socialism in its prevailing form arises indeed
simply from material or so-called "scientific" conceptions (as if
there could be a science of ideal aims and values): but it has, though
only as a secondary object, annexed to itself the values of a
spiritual faith--the latter are, as the language of the market has it,
"thrown in." We have seen to what the material dom