ination of
institutions and apparatus is leading us. To national dignity, or to
any mission for humanity, it does not lead.

What is unprecedented in our problem is not, as we have said, that a
people should beget out of itself its own idea and mission. From the
Jewish theocracy to the French rationalism, from the Chinese
ancestor-worship to the pioneer-freedom of America, all the cultured
peoples have brought this creative act to pass, although in formative
epochs leading classes and leading men have born the responsibility
and made it easy for their countrymen to become aware of their own
unconscious spirit, and through this awareness and consciousness to
isolate and intensify it.

What is unprecedented is just this: that the process should take place
as a deliberate act of will, in democratic freedom, without pressure
and compulsion of authority, in the consciousness of its necessity, on
our own responsibility. Germany is not at present growing leaders and
prophets, we are not in a formative stage, all authority has been
scattered to the winds. It is true that we have one stratum of society
which is capable of understanding the meaning of the task, but it is
deeply cloven, the hatreds and interests of its parties make them more
each other's enemies than the people's.

And yet it is this very class--not as possessor of means but as
possessor of the tradition, which is capable, which is indispensable,
and which is summoned to take in hand the transformation of the German
spirit, to free it from the bonds of mechanism, of capitalism, of
militarism, and to lead it to its true destinies. It cannot do this
for itself alone, amid the blind bitterness of the war of classes; it
cannot do it as a sovran leader relying on its deeper insight, for its
and every other prestige has gone by the board; it can only do it by
the way of service and sacrifice--it can only do it if the service and
the sacrifice are approved and accepted.

The masses will not understand this sacrifice of service; but the more
responsible of their leaders will. Not to-day, indeed, nor to-morrow;
but on the day when experience has shown them that I am telling the
truth. At first they will do as in Russia; when want becomes acute,
they will seek to buy experience and tradition at a high price from
individuals. But mentality and spirit cannot be bought--only labour
and dexterity. Then gradually men will come to understand that the
highest things are not m