e. We are a "race of thinkers and poets." We have Culture, the
others merely Civilization.[19] We alone are free--the others are
merely undisciplined (or, as the case may be, enslaved). All this we
owe to the favour of God and our education under the (here fill in
Prussian, Bavarian or Saxon) reigning House, which all the world
envies us. Clearly therefore we are destined for world-dominion; we
have only to fall-to.

In one of these phrases, about doing things for their own sake,[20]
there is truth. All the more was it for us in particular a vice and a
sign of degradation to let ourselves be dazzled by the shadowless
transparency-picture of glorification that was offered to us. There
were interests concealed in the game, and much lack of moral fibre,
all of which we passed over in silence; it was out of place in our
festal oratory.

It would be an equal or even a greater vice, only reversed, if we were
now to despair of ourselves. Moderation was what we needed then; what
we need now is vigorous and conscious self-possession. To-day it is no
easy and attractive business to bring our strong qualities to the
surface; it implies an amount of conviction which it is hard to
attain, and self-depreciation means a pitiful faint-heartedness. But
all sham goods offered by babblers, by selfish interests, prophets of
hate and commercial travellers must go overboard.

We have never been a "race of thinkers and poets," any more than the
Jews were a race of prophets, the French and Dutch a race of
painters, or Koenigsberg a city of Pure Reason.[21] The old German
upper classes have, in three well-defined epochs, had force enough to
throw up individuals of mighty endowments for music, poetry and
philosophy; the former lower-classes, whose blood runs in nine-tenths
of our present population, have scarcely contributed anything to these
glories. They have in recent years shown themselves thoroughly
industrious, plastic, apt for discipline, order-loving, intelligent,
practical, honourable, trustworthy, warm-hearted, prudent and helpful,
and adapted beyond all expectation to the mechanization of life and
industry; of their power to produce talent we know little, except
perhaps in the domain of research and technique, which are less a test
of creative energy than of applied knowledge and methodical assiduity.

The important question as to what relations exist between the number,
quality and greatness of individual endowments and genius o